David Spragg found the B&B Club and accompanying chips and dice in a antique store in Vermillion, South Dakota. Vermillion is a few miles from Yankton. She said all 5 chips came from an estate sale. The Mason records show Frank Branaugh, a "WW II Hero" bought the hub chips in 1954. The dice records show the dice were shipped to the B&B Club in Yankton.

The 50¢ and $1 chips are on the Christy Jones H&C mold. The CJ Company broke up in 1965. After talking to Frank's son, we believe the 50¢ and $1 chips were also used in the B&B Club. The CJ 50¢ and $1 are from the same years as the B&B Club chips.

Here is a little history that was news to me. It came out of the Burt Company records when researching the B&B chips. The Christy Jones Company, Bill Christy and Bud Jones, was originally called the Christy Garrison Company for Bill Christy and HN Garrison . HN Garrison left the company and started Reno Game Supply in 1953 with the arrowdie mold. We know Bill Christy bought out the Jack Todd Company. I always assumed it was Christy Jones that bought it. Looks like it could have been Christy Garrison.

We cannot prove the SMC and GC diamond molds were used in the B&B Club but they did come out of the same estate sale. I found some prior SMC chips in a lot I got from a Texas seller.

Frank Branaugh's son did have a little information. He said the B&B stood for Frank and Charlie Branaugh. Charlie is Frank's nephew. He said Charlie is still alive but in his words "fading fast." A call to Charlie's son was not returned. Per Frank's son he has 3 sisters that did not even know about the gambling. It was not talked about within the family. He said he had several different chips and dice that were used at the B&B Club but a search did not turn them up as yet.

The B&B Club was in the Yankton VFW hall.

VFW, Moose Lodges, Elks, and American Legions, etc across the country had gambling during the "Era Of The Illegals." They were all illegal operations. Most were left alone as the "City Fathers" were all members. In prior "Illegal Of The Day" posts we have seen federal raids at lodges after the "Gambling Tax Stamp" act was passed.

Enough of that:

South Dakota:

50¢ and $1 chips are CJ and same Front and back.

Frank Branaugh
B&B Club
1106 Pearl St
Yankton, South Dakota
100 chips
8/9/54

B&B

Frank Jonas Branaugh, born South Dakota in 1921, family moved to Yankton when he was a kid. In 1939 he joined the US Army and during WWII he served in the 3rd Infantry Division, “The Rock of the Marne,” and saw action in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. A week after V-E Day, while eating lunch in a farm house near Hitler’s retreat in the Berchtesgaden, a German who had refused to surrender tossed a grenade at him, wounding him in the head, chest and mangling his left hand so severely that it was subsequently amputated.

Branaugh returned to Yankton and worked several different jobs until about a year before the chip order when he started a company called Underground, Inc., a sewer and water line construction company. He appears to have been involved with this business until the late 1960’s. He resided in Yankton the remainder of his life, dying in 2008.

He was a member of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans (he was very involved with the DAV). Maybe the chips had something to do with one of the veterans organizations?

He had several brothers, so maybe B&B is for Branaugh & Branaugh?

His wife Mildred appears to still be living and residing at Yankton, age 84. They were married in 1947, so she might know what Frank was doing with the chips in 1954. Frank and Mildred’s son Tim also resides in Yankton. He was born in 1949, so he would have been a little kid when the chips were ordered but might know something (he has two kids that currently reside in Las Vegas).

pic of Frank Branaugh (he was referred to as “Yankton’s hometown Irishman”, Notre Dame logo on cowboy hat):