I was pleased to be able to add to my Cactus Petes "host chip" collection at the Convention this year. David Sarles had 4 to add to my single, making it complete except for the unique "Bud Gurley" listed in James' book.

These are Christy and Jones chips from the 1950's or 60's that were made with a blank space on the reverse to be hot stamped as needed. Pete Piersanti and Dick Sweeney must have been around a while as each has two chips with different size fonts for their names. The bottom chip next to Cork McKean's chip shows the obverse design for all the chips. James lists these as R8 and R9, indicating 4-15 of each is known.

This is a pretty small club to have "hosts" in the current use of the term, so I'm assuming these were casino manager or pit bosses at Cactus Jacks. Pete Piersanti was one of the owners when the club opened according to James' book. Bud Gurley was the other owner, but must have taken his chips to the grave with him when he died in 1967.

Here is a link to the Ameristar site with some early chronology on Cactus Petes. Ameristar bought the club in 1993.

http://www.ameristar.com/History.aspx