When I would hear of a new casino in Vegas I would call my Aunt, who lives in Vegas, and ask hear to get me a chip. My friends all knew that I collected chips and would bring me back a chip if they went to a place that had them. A friend told me that on his computer at work he stumbled across a message that mentioned the CC>CC and I made hime get me the mailing address. WOW, other people that collect chips, I joined immediately. I was member R-511, how can there be over 500 people that collect chips? I would wait for that quarterly magazine and then mail a letter to anyone that had chips for sale or trade. The way it usually worked was that somebody said in the magazine that they had a trade list available and you should write and ask for a copy to be sent to you in the mail. You got the list about two weeks or more later, because he had to receive your request through the mail make you a copy of the list and mail it back to you. The list was more times than not just that a list. No pictures and if there was pictures it was black and white copymachine images. You basically relied on a discription of the chip. The whole process of buying or trading for a chip could take up to a month. Most of the time I would first see what the chip I received looked like when I opened the package a month from the start of everything. Now it was becoming a hobby. Through the club I found out about Bill Borland and started buying chips from him. He had a friend/partner named Starr who usually handled the sale of old casino chips, at least with me. I ordered a lot of chips from them and was always saving money to order more. I visited their store/warehouse during one of my trips to Vegas and Starr drove me to their house in her car because she had binders full of chips at the house. I remember waiting for what seemed like months until Bill's Blue Book Of Chips was ready to be shipped. I thought it was the best thing that I had ever seen. No pictures, just a basic description of the chip. I now knew how many chips I did not have in my collection. One day a friend told me that he saw a store in the Ocean One Mall in Atlantic City that sold chips. I drove down that night and first met Bob Mera. Through that first store and later his boardwalk shop I joined the Atlantic City chapter and actually met people face to face for the first time in the hobby. Bob was great and very instrumental in making the hobby grow so fast. I was at the first meeting of the AC chapter held on the third deck of the Ocean One Mall. I was lucky to get involved in this hobby before the incredible explosion of casino gambling. I remember the first days of Deadwood and the start of the riverboats. I have made a bunch of friends from areas all over the country and world who would go and get me chips from the areas they lived close to and send them to me. I guarantee
that not one person ever got rich by selling me $1.00 chips, they did it because they wanted me to share in THEIR hobby.
Flash forward to today -- I now see a full color image of a new chip release sometimes within minutes of it's release and actually have the chip in my hands two days later from thousands of miles away. Now I can push some buttons and I can even pay for the chip before the chip is 5 minutes old. It's not better or worse, it is just different. That was my view of the changes.