..........Convention. One of the pluses of driving across country to go to the Convention is that you get to stop along the way at a ton of Casinos and pick up Slot Cards and Room keys.

I collect Slot Cards in 3 different categories:

1. Cards with my name on them (I have well over 2000 different in my collection).

2. Blank Cards - these are tough to get as different Casinos and even different employees have different ideas (a lot of differents there) on giving out Blank Cards. Sometimes I have to ask 2 or 3 people including supervisors and pit bosses before they give me the Blank Cards I asked for. In a lot of cases - you just never get them no matter how hard you try. I will literally beg for cards, telling them I came all the way from Delaware just to get the Blank Cards for my collection - you can't be bashful when you are trying to get Blank Cards.

3. Regular issue cards that you find (oh my God, "Harvest") when you are walking thru a casino and find cards lying around the slot machines.

Once in a while you get real lucky and get some real special cards. At the Rainbow Casino in Wendover, I asked for one each of all the different cards they had - she said OK, i'll get them for you. I expected her to hand me the cards, but she took a few minutes doing something behind the counter. I waited patiently (patience is a virtue when getting cards) until she handed me the stack of cards. I said thank you and walked away very happy. When I looked at the cards - she had printed my name on ever one of the 5 different levels of cards that they had - what a nice surprise !!!

I later found a brochure showing that the Peppermill Casinos (including the Rainbow) were switching to a new style of cards. Armed with this info, I showed the brochure to other Peppermill property card desks and convinced them to give me Blank Cards since the ones they had would soon be destroyed and replaced with new cards. Using this method I was able to get a lot more Blank Cards then I normally would have. These little victories make collecting Slot Cards really fun.

Shown below are some seldom send and kinda "rare" Cards and Keys from my trip - I hope you enjoy seeing them. There are scans of over 300 Cards and Keys.

As far as dups are concerned I found very, very few extra cards lying around in the casinos I visited, but I will offer a few for sale before trhe end of the month in my "Celebration of 999s" month long event.

Take care,
Jerry "Can't get enough cards" Birl