This is an unusual scrimshaw chip that I found in Tombstone a while back. The chip is a small variety antique clay chip with a one ringed flower on one side and a numeral "1" scrimshawed on the reverse with 3 rings. When I found it in an antiques store in Tombstone, I thought it was very unusual and the price was right so I bought it. I showed it to Dale and Ralph at the convention with several other antique chips. Several of the chips that I took were coded by Ralph but not this one. When I got back home from the convention I did some research particulary on a chip that is also a srimshaw BIG WHEEL BICYLE... perhaps you have seen one.

I knew that the BIG WHEEL BICYCLE chip dated back to the 1981 Tombstone Centennial. I could not just except that and had to know more. In 1981 both Tombstone and Bisbee, a town about 20 miles south, were nearly ghost towns and hanging on to their history for existance. Bisbee was a mining town that in the late 1800s and early 1900s was the center of culture between St. Louis and San Francisco. Bisbee even had it's own Stock Exchange! In the mid 1970s, the mines in Bisbee closed and the town was destined to be a ghost town. The word got out in neighboring states that houses were dirt cheap and they were even available to "squaters" to just move into. The population of Bisbee in the mid to late 1970s was mainly comprised of artists and Hippies. The BIG WHEEL scrimshaw chip was a result of this culture and offered on the streets of Tombtone for their Centennial in 1981. I am sure that this FLOWER/1 chip must have been a chip offered about the same time. Very nice craftsmanship probably the result from a sweet smelling "twisted groover" circa 1976! Both Tombstone and Bisbee are today booming tourist towns that survived on their great & deep history.