Ok - this is not exactly on topic for this board as this deals mainly with playable sets of casino chips, but as that is what got me into collectable chips to start with (and lead me to thechipboard in the first place several years ago) I would love to share it with everyone.

The whole thing started in October of 2007 when I had my truck broken into and a lot of chips stolen. It was your basic “smash and grab” robbery. I had to replace the window on my truck and was on the hunt for the scum that grabbed my backpack which held a set (over 350) of New Sonny's Casino chips and about $200 worth of live Washington Casino chips that were to be used as traders.

This upset me on so many levels that I was determined to do everything I could to catch the thieves and retrieve my chips. So I started out going to the local Pawn shops and I began a vigilant monitoring of eBay and Craigslist. After a while I grew tired of visiting the Pawn shops as I had no luck with my chips and the only chips that seemed to show up were of the dice variety, which got depressing to a poker playing chip enthusiast like myself.

However I kept up with the Craigslist and eBay monitoring as this was less labor intensive and could be done from any computer. eBay as you know is completely overrun with medium to low end chips in the thousands, and Craigslist hardly has anything at all. But I stuck with it…

Fast forward 8 months to June of this year… While looking on Craigslist, I found a post that piqued my interest. The title said “Clay Poker chips. $100.00”. This one was different than most of the ads I had seen because the price was pretty high compared to the standard $50 posts for dice chips. I clicked on the link and there was just a blurry picture of a bunch of chips in racks stacked up in a cardboard box. I couldn’t tell what the chips were but I could tell they didn’t have edgespots and they were in racks. Both very promising signs. I contacted the seller and asked for a close up picture of the chips… She sent this:

My thought process was along the lines of “No way… I finally scored!” I contacted her right away to let her know I would take them. After I received the shipment I emailed her to say “Thanks” and to ask about the history of the chips. This is what she replied:

Hi Tom! I am glad you like the chips and cards. They are very old. My husband and I both worked at Foxwoods in the early 90's when they first opened. All of this stuff came from the original dealers school where my husband was the poker instructor for several years. We have had it stored in a box for years and just never used it. We both loveto play poker and always fancied having a home game... we just never did! Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for everything!

Oh yeah, and she didn’t just send me chips, She sent me all of this!

It ended up being 900+ Paulson chips (consisting of Fun Nites, Starbursts, and Diamond Horseshoes) Two setups of Foxwoods Gemaco cards (one sealed) a sealed setup of pre USPC casino Kems and a couple of table plaques! Oh and all the chips were shipped in Paulson Racks (and a few extra racks to boot, for a total of 13). FWIW, the Paulson brand is absolutely huge with Casino set collectors, regarded as the Cadillac of Poker chips.

Opening the box seriously felt like Christmas' I remember as a kid. I went through all the chips and sorted them by color and hotstamp and just had a blast. When I saw the cards and noticed the Paulson racks and the other extras it was just a feeling of complete awe. I couldn’t believe that I had finally picked up something that compared to some of the great garage sale finds I have seen posted both here and on chiptalk.net.

While I was overwhelmed by what I had found, the feeling eventually wore off because they were not exactly what I was looking for, and soon the chips found their way to the classified here on CT. The chips sold very quickly as I listed them at what I thought was below “market value” but I still made a lot of money from the sale.

So my Craigslist days started again. However, this time there was an excitement that made the searching even more fun than before. I had forgiven (but not forgotten) the Thieves that stole my chips, but I wanted something to replace them. My excitement got me looking in other cities across the nation on Craigslist. I would do two searches using the search terms “poker” and “casino” in each city I tried. I would try to do two cities each day before work just to see what was out there. Almost immediately I went to the Miami Craigslist and saw a post which simply said “Casino Chips $.30 each”. The title was nothing special as I had seen literally hundreds of dice chips advertised as “Casino Chips”, but I clicked on the link anyway. This posting too had another really poor picture of a rack of orange chips. Again, the chips were solid and this time I could see they were hotstamped! I can’t remember if Von (deputyfl) had also seen the ad on Craigslist himself, or if I had directed him to it, but Von had the first dealing with the seller of the chips. The seller did get Von his chips but was a very slow shipper. Von actually thought for a while he had been ripped off. Being a collectable chipper, Von only ordered a very small amount of chips from the seller to trade for other chips he needed. However knowing that Von’s transaction went relatively smoothly, and his information that they were BCC’s gave me enough confidence to give it a shot.

When I first contacted the seller the guy was very excited about the chips. I told him I would take a 1000 chip set if he would agree to ship them to me up here in Washington. He was happy to agree and ask that I send the money via Western Union. I thought to myself “Seriously? Western Union? What the Hell am I getting myself into here?” However being a bit of a gambler and taking the approach that I was really not putting anything at risk because I had already recouped my cost of this purchase as well as the first Craigslist purchase several times over, so if the seller decided to screw me it would be no big deal as I was still up in the big picture. So I decided to take the chance and wired the seller a little over $400 via Western Union. Being the math guru’s I know you all are, you must be thinking “But at $.30 each that would only be $300 plus some extra for shipping?” And you would be correct. I sent $60 extra because he said he had some “speed chips” that he would like to get rid of as well. I asked him to describe them and I found out they were $5 chips from the Maxamillion Casino. All I knew about the Maxamillions was they were Bud Jones (one of my favorites) and they were out of my price range. Because they were so expensive I never paid much attention to them or the breakdowns that were available. Anyway I decided to get a couple of racks to hopefully build a mixed set of Bud Jones chips with. Little did I know what I was in store for!

A little over two weeks went by and no chips. I started to think I got the shaft but finally the chips showed up. This time, because the box was so heavy and I knew exactly what was inside (Von had posted pics) I was quite literaly shaking with excitement. I know I am a dork but I really like poker chips, casino chips especially. When I opened the box ans saw the packaging, well there was no packaging but the chips were in surprisingly good shape. After the broken chips were taken out, a final count came out to just a few under 1300 total. I quickly got the Aquasino’s out and snapped some pictures and posted my find to folks at Chiptalk.net who get real excited about casino chip sets:

I could barely contain myself! These were seriously my dream chips. A multi-table tournament set of casino chips! This was my Holy grail. If I had the choice I would have preferred them to be Paulson, but the fact they were made for a casino more than made up for that in my chip collector mind. I quickly contacted the seller and ordered a bunch more. In fact I was so excited I had no idea of what I ordered other than it was at least 1000 more and another rack of the Maxamillions.

And that brings me back to the Maxamillions. After all, they were just an afterthought. Seeing as I didn’t know much about them, I posted a what are these? thread on chiptalk. The reaction I got was "Are those real?" and "I knew they existed but I have never seen more than 10 in one place".

As these chips ended up being very rare in quantity, I ended up working a deal with a chiptalk member where I would get a full playable set of 500 Max’s with no extra money out of pocket! Needless to say I was stoked. I am now the very proud owner of a set that I thought was so far out of reach as far as price goes that I never really gave them much thought. I can’t tell you how excited I am to own these:

Now rewind a little bit to my second order of Aquasino’s. I wired the seller another Western Union payment almost immediately upon receipt of the first package, and then the stress started. This time the price of the chips went up to $.40 (bummer) but for some reason the guy was really dragging his feet shipping my chips to me. Others had contacted the guy because of my posts and now they were getting their chips before me when I had already paid for the chips prior to them even knowing the chips existed! I was thinking the worst, that he was selling my chips to other people and was going to shaft me with either leftovers or worse yet, nothing at all. It was a very fine line I was walking because I didn’t want to piss him off because he already had my money and also all the chips. There was seriously nothing I could do except wait and just give him a friendly email or phone call reminding him that I still didn’t have my chips. I wanted to yell and swear and curse the guy because it had been almost a month since I paid him! But eventually it all worked out and I received my last shipment. Now, I really had my dream set. After a few trades and selling some of my extras, I now have these:

All 2000 of them!

So in all, I figure I am up about $150 more than I started with and have a few sweet setups of cards, some Paulson racks, my dream set of tournament chips (Aquasino’s) and a set I didn’t ever think I’d own in the Maxamillions.

At this point there is really nothing else I am looking for as far as chip sets go. I am totally content with what I have. I can now get back to collecting my individual Washington State Casino chips!

If you read the whole thing thanks! I hope you enjoyed it.
Keep an eye on Craigslist, there is a lot of junk, but every once (or twice) in a while you find something that makes it all worth while.

- Tom Hanson