I'm driving from the SF Bay Area to Reno for a long weekend and am planning on hitting up as many casinos as possible to pick up $5 chips for my collection.

My basic plan is to hit all possible casinos, walk up to the cage, pick up their standard $5 chip (assuming it's not in my collection already), and then ask if they have any special or commemorative chips. If they take a minute to look around, tip them a buck, and pick up that chip too.

That's the basic plan, but I'm wondering if there's any way to be smarter about it...

Is there some way to know what special chips are currently available? Is there a better way to try and track down special chips?

This is my first 'cold-call' trip, or whatever, and I thought there might be a way to be smarter about things than the brute force approach.

Thanks.