Skip wrote: HI.. HERE IS A REAL CHIP.... ILL BET SOME REAL BIG ROLLER HELD THIS ONE IN THERE HANDS...

There you go Skip, one of the great things about the chips we collect is holding them and wondering who else held them when the little guys were live. Here's some names that may have stacked chips at the 21 Club back in the day. The postcard is from 1944 so your chip may have seen action on these tables once they opened the dooor that day.

Billy Wilkerson was most likely a 21 Club patron. As many of you may know, Wilkerson was the fellow who actually started building the Flamingo. a guy with a real knack for putting together resturants and nightclubs as he found out in New York while running speakeasies for Mayor Jimmy Walker. Billy took his genius to LA and invented the Hollywood Reporter that still functions today as a highly influential publication. Made Wilkerson a millionaire. Wilkerson was also a degenerate gambler and scattered his millions at west coast racetracks and Las Vegas. He'd borrow the money back from Tinsletown to make payroll, after all, he had the juice through his paper to make the studios always take his calls. 21 Club would suit Billy just fine being a pretty reliable high rolling loser. Finally Wilkerson tumbled onto the fact that he'd be better off if he built his own dang casino so he set about designing the Flamingo.

Another 21 Club guy would be Bugsy Siegel. "The Boys" fell for Wilkerson's dream and were part of the financing syndicate. Billy got the construction started and took most of the rest of the money and set about losing it at places like the 21 Club. Siegel was the guy selected to watch the mobs' investment. The Hotel Last Frontier was just actoss the street from the Flamingo construction site, actually probably the only suitable accomadations out there in desert for Billy and Benjamin. Seigel confronts Wilkerson about missing funds and Wilkerson, no dummy, puts North America and the Atlantic Ocean between him and Bugsy but still looks over his should while walking around Paris, France for the next couple of years. Hard not to notice that Bugsy's 1948 opening night chips at the Flamingo were die-cut silver inlaid small keys just like over there at the the 21 Club.

I've always wondered if'n there was a picture somewhere of Siegel, Wilkerson and our next likely patrons of the 21 Club. Imagine a table at the dining room with those two plus Roy Rogers and Dale Evans! Pam G. passed along the tidbit that Roy and Dale stayed at Hotel Last Frontier while they were filming Heldorado. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038593/ Pam was flummoxed that Trigger got top billing over Dale so perhaps while Roy was out grooming his hoss his wife was pushing Skip's chip out into the betting circle.

In the end, the chips may not be live anymore but if we in the hobby keep holding them,keep looking at them and keep wondering about them, they will never die.