Apparently I was the only chip collector who did the 502 mile long Highway 11 yard sale from near the Casino at Philadelphia, MS (the naughty filter didn't like the cities name for some reason) to Kingsport, TN this week. One dealer on the second day did say that someone else had asked about chips but he was the only one. I wore my "I buy casino chips" tee shirt and it got a lot of comments and at least one possible lead. (You don't really expect much from the Bible Belt in the way of chips.) Got got up real early Thursday morning and drove to Chatanooga, TN as my starting point. The original plan was to go from there to at least Knoxville, TN but as I was driving I remembered how little I normally found from that area when I lived there. Just too many really poor people in that area. I realized that the only time I have been down from Chatanooga, TN toward Birmingham, AL was a small part of it on the worlds longest yard sale. OK so lets go south instead of north! The grand plan became to get to Birmingham the first night and then near Philadelphia, MS the next day.

When I do these long sales I pick up all sorts of usefull crap that we would buy anyway. Very first stop I bought 3 years worth of shampoo for $2 and a years worth of soap for another buck. Now you know what those extreme couponing people do with all that stuff they buy or get for free. As I went along I didn't find any chips until the middle of the day when I found a WM H&C with a $25 denomination on it. Not in TGT so probably just a personal chip. I found a few pieces of silver jewelry along the way but many dealers were telling me that people were asking for jewelry all day. Some even said they sold theirs when setting up the day before.

While not as hot as during the worlds longest sale (it only got to about 85 degrees) the sun was brutal all day and there was no breeze. I ran out of energy early and had to revitalize myself with some ice cream. While eating it I realized that there was no way I was going to make Birminham that day. I set my sights on Gadsden instead. Never even made it that far and ended up staying at the no-tell motel in a small town 20 miles from Gadsden. I may be dumb for continuing to look but you just never know what will be out there. Around 4 PM I was looking at a pile of 8 pieces of gold colored jewelry that had been picked thru all day. I noticed some very small printing on one piece and my loupe showed it to be marked 14K! Even the clip on it was also marked 14K. OK how much? I gotta get a quarter for that. DONE! Five minutes later I am at another sale and trying to spot something of interest before calling it a day. BAM!! There is a large display case with around 60 cancelled manufacturers chips. The guy wants $300 for all of them but they include around 10 from Bell and Regency in CA which I had no interest in. Many of the chips are foreign ones I have never seen before and since the guy had no idea as to value he assumed that the higher the number on the chip the more valuable it was. Some of them were priced at up to $20 each which I thought was high for a cancelled chip. I picked all of the cheap ones and several nicer high denomination ones and worked a good deal even though he would not come down much from his asking price. I had to give several of the nicer ones back to him since I didn't think they were worth anything near his asking price. I ended up with the 20 chips shown.

Another indication that no chip collectors were there was that in the middle of the second day I found the 3 ashtrays shown. The Bill and Effies is not in the Anderson book and looks like a really nice one to me. All told I bought two LCD computer monitors, 2 quarts of Honey, over 3 OZ of silver jewelry and the gold piece (weight .06 OZ which doesn't sound like much but it is $56 worth), a Roseville vase and a very old kids hand made boy scout scrap book (I paid $10 but it has $20 in unused stamps in it). Lots of fun but I am getting too old for this much heat and excerise!