We see this chip here on The Chipboard pretty regularly. Usually a bewildered collector just starting out is asking for the skinny on these pieces. They've looked in the guides and while chips from the Trocadero Reno exist,there are no brass cores listed. The response raneges from fake to counterfeit to almost the correct answer. the almost correct answer is that Mel Jung created them for a reno chip show. essentially, that is correct but that answer is not as interesting as the long form of the answer. I found the story on these chips a while back in the CCTN Winter 2001 issue.

Mel Jung wrote an article in that issue under his semiregular column "Mel's Chipistry" subtitle The Last of theBrass - A Classic Chip Very intersting piece in which Mel covers history and technical aspects of brass cores and their manufactur as well as including plenty of great stories about these chips. Stories? One issue of brass cores were pulled from play at a joint after a poker player threw one at an opponent resulting in injury and one collector aiming for the best most complete collection of brass cores bought a $5000 bacarrat at the cage. Surely one of the highest priced collection acquistions from a casino cashier in the hobby perhaps?

So on to this Trocadero piece. Mel and his friend Armin Pfaender were in Reno to do a chip show in Dec. '95 when they cme upon the El Cortez Hotel. Somewhere on the first floor there once was a very lively casino named the Trocadero Mel and Armin decided this would be a great spot to have their own chip show and made arrangements with El Cortez. one great idea the pair cooked up was to put on an exhibition of Faro in the front window with chippers running and participating in the game. They had chips made by Royce for the event and got permission from Gaming for a one day faro game at the loction. They had 200 chips made of each denomination used, a marbelized $2 and $5. The show went off Oct. 1996 but the faro equipment and dealer failed to show. Mel states that a few hands of Blackjack were played with the chips to "assure validity to see that the chip WAS in play at the El Cortez, Trocodero room."

Pretty good story and it made me want to get these chips. found the one at the top during this year's convention and bought it for $10. Passed along the story to a few folks when showing off the chip and none had realized what the particulars were behind it. I've found that many times learning the history of our chips can triple my enjoyment of having them. Hope this info helps you in this direction too if you've got some of these.

I've noticed the El Cotez Hotel often in Reno and attempted to photograph the dump for this post but they've knocked it down for a small parking aea for the new Reno Aces baseball stadium.

Here's the page on Trocadero chips from the Club's Fake Fantasy and Counterfeits page http://www.ccgtcc.com/~fantasy/images/trocadero.jpg

PLease feel free to add on to all this!