These chips are from closer than you think. They were used at The Newport Beach, it was a bar on the Islands Restaurant Barge, located at 301 Riverboat Row, Newport Ky. The islands were owned by none other than the Schilling family, you may recognize that name as the owners of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, through out the early 1970’s up until the time of the fire. The schilling at one point owned pretty much all the key night clubs and restaurants in the area (Porky’s January’s, The Islands, Crystal Parrot and several others). The chips were used there around the mid 80’s, they ran 3 as I remember, black jack tables. The patron would but the chips, obviously not at face value, and would play until they ran out of chips or bought more. At the end of the night, you could cash in for a voucher, that could be used to get chips another night. Once a patron had accumulated a certain amount of chips, they could be cashed in for “gifts”, usually T shirts, sweat shirts, and the ultimate goal of everyone back in the 80’s “the silk ISLANDS jacket, you were someone if you had one of those. I spent a lot of money buying chips back then, and never did get my jacket… These chips seem to surface around the Northern Kentucky area every few years, I don’t know if one person has all of them and just slowly selling them off, or what. There was another local bar “LaBoom” that was part of the Waterfront Barge in Covington, which also ran the same exact type of game. Chips from there also appear. These were both floating restaurants, moored on the banks of the Ohio river. I know I have been all through the Waterfront, and none of the chips are left in there, the owner said they disappeared several years back. But yet they have never turned up in quantities. The Waterfront was recently in the news about a month ago, when it broke loose from the shore, with 87 passengers on board and hit the bridge. The river was at its high flood stage, and running very quickly. We were there for almost 5 hours getting all the passengers and guests back to shore. Made for a long night.