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Earlier in the week I received an email from a man living in Las Vegas that wanted to provide me with his Sahara plaque serial numbers. As many of the readers here know, I have a webpage devoted to seeking out Sahara plaque serial numbers, called the Great Sahara Plaque Registry Project. (Link here: http://www.thechipgallery.com/plaque.htm )
While not current I keep it up so that others can see the great information I was able to obtain from BetG, before they merged with Paul-Son/Bud Jones as GPI. The principal purpose of the site was to assist other plaque owners to possibly making trades with other owners in an effort to get matched serial numbers of the different denominations. (To date there is still only one matched serial number set.)
Evidently the emailer came across the website and sent me an email advising that he had several plaques and once upon a time he was a bacarrat dealer at the Sahara and acutually dealt games in which the plaques were used. To the best of my recollection, I don't think we have heard any first-hand stories about use of the plaques at the Sahara, so I was very excited to hear from a real-life participant!
I passed along my telephone number and after several days he gave me a call. He said the he started at the Sahara when the plaques were already in-play and that after about 18 months into his employment, the plaques were pulled. I asked why he thought they were pulled and he said it was because the plaques slowed down the play. The house was not getting the number of hands per hour that they did with cash, so they just stopped using the plaques. (I don't know what they switched to, chips or back to cash, but that is a question for future interview.)
I asked him about his plaques and he said that his were all framed. He said that he had a framed set of four plaques, a $20, a $50, a $100 and a $500, all with different serial numbers. (We have heard previously that the Sahara did frame plaques in sets of four and gave them out to their executive.) He also has a framed set of three plaques, 2 $20 and a $100, arranged veritucally with the $100 between the 2 $20's. Lastly, he had 2, individually framed $20 plaques.
The most interesting thing about these framed sets was that all the frames appeared to be the same. This would mean that the Sahara also framed other plaque combinations, which I've not heard before. I plan to get some pictures of his framed plaques and of course some additional details about his days (nights) of dealing bacarrat at the Sahara with these BetG plaques! Thats it for now, but I'd surely like to hear from other collectors some suggestions for interviewing questions.
And BTW - This guy is still dealing bacarrat! Not at the Sahara, but still on the Strip!
Jim
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