Was always curious about when front strike matchbooks were outlawed and never really found a good answer. I like to match up books to chips and casinos I collect, kinda adds to the background of the clay. So anyway, I tried various Google searches and finally got past all the eBay stuff and found the answer! Great Day, what! http://matchpro.org/Anatomy.html tells us:

The biggest permanent change in design came in 1973, when all matchbooks were federally mandated to have the strikers put on the back panel, for safety.

Please use the link to read important additional infomation related to this date.

So I go to my matchbook storage solution which is all the slot coin cups (which I don't collect either) and got some interesting examples to dress up this here post. Now armed with these definitive dates I figured I could deduce all sorts of fun stuff from these books of matches. For instance, perhaps there exist front strikers for Sahara Tahoe as it opened in'65 and Jessie Beck moved over to the Riverside in 1970 so there are probably other strikers around for that.

Then I looked at the Bank Club, Ely... and got stuck. Umm, it closed in 1968 and it's got a rear strike format. Sigh. Wait, maybe it operated as a hotel/resturant after the casino closed or something but no, the back of the book adverts gaming and there is no area code on the phone #.

Glad I only collect casino chips where we know everything there is is to know about the object of our hobby, right?