The EW chips showed up on ebay a few weeks ago. When the ID came back, it was a pleasant surprise to me. New Florida illegal's don't come around often. We have only seen 2 Florida "Illegal Of The Day" posts. The last one was October 2011. Ed Hertel jumped on the ID and we had plenty of info on Earl Warner before the auction ended.

Take it away Ed.

I received the below chips recently and although Florida is not one of my areas of expertise, I thought I might take a look and see if it had any legs. Spoiler alert – IT DID!

The large order of 2,000 chips was shipped to:
Earl Warner - Chateau Lido
Daytona Beach, Florida
1946

(side note – the colors of the $1 and $25 chips are unusually similar. I have a hard time telling them apart myself. I can only guess this was a mistake on Warner’s part and must have caused some confusion in the club.)

The story of Earl Warner is a common one to other hustlers we’ve seen. He was born Earl Warner Allgaiers, but was quick to drop the complicated last name when he struck out on his own. His rap sheet grew at an early age as he tried his hand at different vices. He built up large profits from selling black market gasoline during the tight rationing war years and was arrested repeatedly for such things as counterfeiting, assault, violating liquor laws and operating a house of pro$titution.

In Daytona Beach, Florida, Earl Warner found himself in a new line of work – running illegal gambling casinos. During early 1940s, he was put in charge of the locally popular Club Pier Casino. The word “casino” shouldn’t be automatically associated with gambling as many times it just meant a meeting place for dancing and entertainment. Even without evidence of such, with a guy like Earl Warner running the place, it’s hard to imagine there wasn’t something shady going on.

The Club Pier Casino was a large building extending on a pier over the ocean, very similar to the Balinese Room, the famous gambling casino in Galveston, Texas. For a club wanting to deal in illegal activities, this set-up is beneficial as it makes unwanted raids very difficult. Entry into the club is only accessible through one access point which is usually easy to monitor and control.

Regardless of the illegal activity at the Club Pier Casino, we do know that gambling was happening at his next venture – the Club Chateau Lido. In 1945 it was announced that Earl Warner was leaving the Pier Casino and taking over the operations at the Chateau Lido on Sickler Drive, along the Halifax River. It was being billed as “the most beautiful supper club in Florida.”

Of course it’s one thing to bill yourself and “the most beautiful” and it’s quite another to pull it off. The Club Chateau Lido however did have a unique look. Its downstairs was open to allow tables and a floor show which hosted big orchestras and topflight entertainers. The second floor was positioned to the side of an open dome which allowed patrons to look down on all the entertainment.

What these upstairs patrons were doing was a secret to the rest of the house, but the order of the “EW” casino chips at this time gives us a clue. Earl Warner’s reputation in Daytona Beach was growing, and it wasn’t for the better. Citizens were starting to talk about the illegal gambling and questions were being asked about why the law wasn’t doing something about it.

In 1947 the Club Chateau Lido was sold to the Loyal Order of the Moose who transformed it into their meeting lodge. Earl Warner and his new partner Gordon Miller turned their attention to a place called the Seabreeze Golf and Tennis Club and set up shop.

It didn’t take long before news of the activities in the club circulated around town. The citizens, frustrated with the lack of law enforcement, went to the judge and asked for help. What they received was the power of “elisor”. Where a sheriff can deputize a citizen, a judge can elisor someone. He gave this group of private citizens the power to arrest people, and that is exactly what they did.

In October 1948, a group of newly empowered citizens swept through Daytona Beach and started raiding illegal gambling clubs. The three clubs hit were the Club Diamond, the Beach Club and the Seabreeze Golf and Tennis Club. The mob confiscated gambling equipment worth $97,000 and arrested eight people, including Earl Warner.

And just in case there was any question about why he was arrested, he was charged with “unlawfully and feloniously maintaining a gaming room for the purpose of gaming and gambling in a certain building known as the Seabreeze Golf and Tennis Club.” No misinterpreting that!

Warner knew with all the evidence that there was little he could do to fight it. He pled guilty on gambling and was fined $1,500. The fine was small, but the loss of gambling equipment was significant.

Licking his wounds, Earl Warner returned to his home state of Indiana with the plan of raising horses. Like most of his plans however, these too did not unfold as expected and after a fire destroyed his barn, he returned to Daytona Beach to do what he did best.

Warner bought a motel on South Peninsular Drive and used it for a home. It was around this time in 1951 when he made an order for more chips from Taylor and Co with the familiar “EW”. It was also around this time that Estes Kefauver’s committee on organized crime was hounding the Taylor company for a list of their customers. There, we find Warner’s last gambling location of the Sea Side Coffee Shop. No doubt he was using his new chips either in the Sea Side or in one of the rooms at the motel. Where ever they were used, it wouldn’t be for long.

My note: We need the T mold EW chips. Cough them up if you have traders.

With his health fading quickly, Warner tried his hand on a new hustle. In 1954 he bought a large amount of unrefined opium and was surprised when his newly hired chemist turned out to be an undercover policeman. The following year found him fighting his own health as well as the courts.

With an unwinnable court date quickly approaching, the stress finally caught up to him and Earl Warner died in December 1956 of coronary thrombosis. The emaciated body and the aging face betrayed his young 54 years. The man who hustled his entire life was finally able to rest.

My note: Florida has a long and storied history with gambling that involved many of the mafia crime families around the US including New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and New Orleans families. The mafia families considered the Miami area as an "Open" city, meaning anyone could operate there, same as Las Vegas. I see nothing that makes me believe Earl Warner was involved with any of them.