After being away for several days I needed to make good on my offer to try and pick up some $25 Grand Opening chips from the Desert Diamond Casino, Tucson, AZ. The GO commemorates the "opening" of their Old Nogales replacement facility, as I had mentioned in an earlier post ( http://www.thechipboard.com/cgi-bin/bbs521/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/682326 ).

At the time, only the $5 GO was being released, while the $25 was awaiting a "special" release to some officials. Well, as of yesterday, the $25 GO's are now available from the cage, but you need to ask and not take "No" for an answer. In my case, the cage sent me to the pit. The pit tried to send me to the cage. At the pit I asked for, and was given, the phone number of the person in-charge of the chips. I called him and he said that he instructed the cage yesterday to release them for sales at the cage and that someone (not me) then bought 8 of them. He then told me who to ask for at the cage and when I did, the story changed. I turned over my money and asked the cashier is she could find any low numbers, saying, "the lower, the better" as she walked over to the main bank.

She then returned with 3 chips and I was very surprised to see the serial numbers. This is an example!

I had already known that #1 was unavailable, but #0002 of 1000? Not bad!!

I still need to go back for a few more, but this one is all mine!

Thanks for looking,

Jim