Well the long-n-short of it is.............I was 23 years old in that transitional stage of life after moving to Colorado a few years earlier to attend college in Denver. During that time I had a neighbor who relocated his young family to the hills west of Denver to a tiny town now becoming once again famous for it's riches. Instead of gold it was now easy money delivered from slot machines in the new casinos of Black Hawk and Central City.
In 1995 my buddy invited me to come up for some dinner, beers and a campfire. (A real family tradition I had grown up with in my home state of Wisconsin.) After spending the weekend up here I decided this was a place for me. Small, rural, beautiful and rustic. Central City still captures in look and atmosphere the real old west. Main St. looks as it did in 1874, for the most part. And of course having 25 casinos in a 1 mile radius of my new home full of good looking women, cheap food and free drinks was a shoo-in for this 24 year country boy from Wisconsin.
Naturally the next step was to get a gaming license since it was the only source of employment in the area. My 1st job was bartending at the Red Dolly Casino. Then shortly there after I got a job at Bronco Billy's which at that time was a pretty happening casino in Black Hawk. My job was working on the drop team. Long before the days of "titos", it was all coin and really a tough job. I had a boss there who collected tokens and in the wee hours of the morning we would sort through all the foreign tokens and grab all the good stuff for ourselves. We would set aside our goodies and return them to the cage and buy them after our shift was done for face value. Keep in mind in 1995 all the chips and tokens from the early Colorado casinos were still in circulation and fairly easy to be had especially working in a casino.
Shortly there after I ran across a few foreign chips from Cripple Creek and that was that. I was now on a quest that continues to this day to collect all things Colorado casinos or just casinos period.

A few other tidbits.
1. I have gotten all the pieces in my various collections from so many people and places I cannot begin to tell you who or where but I'm glad I did. So many great people I've meet through the hobby that I'm still friends with.
2. I have been a member of the Colorado Club since 1998. Ironically I didn't even know about the CCGTCC until 2001 and finally joined I think in 2004 or 2005.
3. My Dad retired to Henderson in 1998 and of course I went nuts collecting Nevada stuff.
4. I was a lurker on the chipboard for months before I made my 1st post, which I would really like to when that was????
5. I wasn't really a matchbook collector until I realized that after years of visting casinos in WI, IA, MN, IL, SD, NV and CA that I had several gallon bags of matchbooks and thought "hey I got a pretty neat collection here" Then I went to my 1st CCGTCC convention and I came home with gallon baggies of books!! Thanks Jerry, Janice, Bill J, Jim M, Cameron K and others!!
6. Growing up my Grandfather and my Dad were all coin collectors and I remember as a kid going through jars of pennies looking for "wheaties" w/ my brothers!
7. I love this hobby and hope that I can thumb through my binders when I'm in my 60's and say "yeah kid you see that matchbook from Reno...........that casino in closed over 100 years ago!!!"