On the off chance that I was looking at someone's missing collection, I am posting this information.

Last week I met an antique dealer (who does not have a shop) at an antique fair. He had some dice that I bought, and I asked about chips. He said that he had just acquired a collection from the Washington State area, and although he did not have the chips with him, we could get together later. That later turned out to be late last week. We met at a local restaurant and he produced a valise/satchel type bag that contained a 3" or 4" 3-ring binder full of 20-pocket pages of chips. All the pockets were filled, and the flips were the paper and mylar type. Written on each flip was the casino name and city location, the chip's denomination, and sometimes a rarity adjective, like: very rare, or rare, or closed, and lastly, what appeared to be a price.

In addition to the binder, there was a small plastic box (about 6" x 4" x 5") with a bunch of chips (also in paper and mylar flips), along with 4 or 5 small law enforcement-like badges/shields. There was also a long black box (a 2" x 2" double-row flip container) filled with $1.00 slot machine tokens from all over Nevada. Only about 1/5th of the box was tokens from Las Vegas. The rest were from all over Nevada, and they were packed in tight, and filed alphabetically by City, and then Casino name.

There was second bag. It was black ballistic nylon flight bag. From it he produces about twenty 20 pocket pages, which were not in binders. Every page was full of chips in paper and mylar flips, pretty much as I described for the pages in the binder, except he had printed the TCR values (high value only) on the back of each flip. The chips were filed alphabetically.

In all, there was approximately 600 chips and the box full of tokens. He said that he had acquired the collection as part of a "token" collection that he bought from an Estate Sale in Washington State. The casino chips and tokens were residual items from what he bought the collection for, which was a 'token' collection. In this instance, 'token' refers to trade, commerce and tax tokens from the early days of the American West. This dealer specializes in Arizona tokens.

The chip collection is described as follows:

Mostly Nevada. Mostly Northern Nevada. Mostly obsolete. $25 and under, including fractionals. Very little in big name Las Vegas. No Flamingo, Dunes, Sands, Hacienda, Landmark (except 1), Riviera, Caesars Palace. The Four Queens $1 Arrowdie and it's like $1 Fremont Arrowdie were represented. The Thunderbird $5 yellow Arrowdie and the Tropicana $1 ½ pie (1st issue) was there. The Holiday Casino bicentennial, 3 perfect examples of the Crumley Hotels no denomination, red, Arrowdie chips (TCR #N9521), the Harvey's bicentennial. There was stuff from RanchInn, Golden Nugget, Union Plaza, Bal Tabarin, Sahara, Sahara Tahoe, Harrah's, etc.

There was a very small selection of recent stuff, like a well worn Excalibur $1, but less than 10 items. There was representation from some older California card rooms, like a .50 Rainbow Club and several Gardenia Club chips, all small crown mold. Not surprisingly was several Boreland commemoratives and very surprisingly, some fanatasy chips. Several Pyramid Casino, one Bugsy's Hideaway and a few others, all of which were marked with $40 or more prices! Some used the magical "rare" word.

I ended up pulling several flips from the pages and when we started to discuss prices, he held firm with what would have been the lower TCR value. I told him I could get that from any where and that I was not interested in arriving at a price based on the TCR (even though he was using what had to of been TCR 6 (maybe 5). He said that he had not shown the collection to anyone, I was the first knowledgeable person to see it. He will explore eBay. We parted company without making a transaction.

I decided to post this info on the off chance that his acquisition (not necessarily by him, but by others) may not have been legitimate. Is anyone aware of the loss of such a collection? Is there a member that we have lost track of? Who ever had the collection had to be aware of the CC>CC.

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Jim Follis