Well, I know nothing about the MEC chip myself, other than that handwritten note from somewhere indicating it was sent to George Perry, who was the owner of the Main Entrance Casino. It seems reasonable that those initials stand for that casino, if that note is credible. If someone had the purchase order from the factory that made the MEC chips, then that would be more definitive.

What I do know is that no one named Custer was ever associated with the Main Entrance Casino in 1939, either in news reports, county property records, or advertisements. The only recorded Custer in Stateline at that time was Carlos Custer Kulp (AKA Calvin Custer), whose real surname was not even Custer, so there's no point in speculating about family relationships.

I have seen some blog posts by Al Moe stating that Frank Mercer owned the Main Entrance Casino, and that, too, is false. There are no records that Frank Mercer nor Miles E. Custer ever worked or owned property in Stateline, even though they were both real people who ran casinos in other areas of the state.

I could make a full-time career out of debunking "facts" published in books by Harvey Fuller or Al Moe, often presented without reference to the source of the "facts." Al Moe often writes blog posts or Wikipedia articles, citing his own previous books as "sources" of the information. I re-wrote his Wikipedia entry on the Stateline Country Club, citing actual non-Moe sources, since he had factual errors in nearly every sentence.

Remember the silly debate here a couple years ago about whether the Tahoe Palace and Tahoe Plaza casinos were in the same building, or which one opened first? Rather than looking at actual property records or period news reports to see when each casino actually opened or closed, people were citing old, poorly sourced books, guides, or Web sites, which tend to find one questionable "fact" and keep repeating it among themselves until everyone just assumes it is true.

The same thing seems to be happening here. Someone decades ago, with no factual basis or historical citation, made the assumption that Miles E. Custer worked at the Stateline Country Club (perhaps confusing him with Calvin Custer), and that somehow made it into an otherwise reputable book, and now 30 years later, it's up to me to "prove" Miles E. Custer did NOT work in Stateline?

My point is that old chip guides may be good sources of photos or lists of known chips, but when they start talking about people and businesses and historical facts, you need to determine whether they are verifiable facts, or just conjecture the author made up that sounded right at the time. This is especially true of old clubs that opened and closed decades before the author came along, and they just repeat second-hand information that someone else told them.

Even some good casino books containing interviews with actual casino managers need to be taken with a grain of salt. When an old casino worker is talking about clubs from decades earlier, he might mis-remember the name, or the year he worked there, or who owned it when, etc. The only good facts I have confidence in are news reports, where the reporter states that he was actually at the grand opening of a new club last night -- you can take that as a fact, not an assumption or foggy memory or second-hand anecdote told decades later.

Sorry about the long-winded rant. I just want everyone here to be careful when citing old chip guides and blogs and Web sites as "historical facts." You always have to ask why an author wrote something, and where they got the information. It's like science -- it's not a fact until someone else can independently verify it.