...likely come along and show what many consider to be the first commemorative from 1931.

I tend to agree with your post.
But neither the sail boat or the Sahara was an LE in my opinion. They were commemorative's.
I have the numbers made on the sail boat somewhere. There were a lot more than 10,000 made. Harrahs contacted a few chippers about 1999-2000 and offered a lot of UNC ones for sale.

Was the Queen's Poker Classic set in Jan 1996 the first chip that actually had an LTD number on it?
Thats what I came up with doing a quick search of my files.