Atlantis Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey

This is a Happy Day! As you know Playboy Casino closed up and 1984 than Atlantis took over. They used Playboy Tokens in the $1 machines. Samples were made up for Atlantis but were never made. 1st shown is a $1 Atlantis Die Trial Strike, Its made out of lead or a soft metal. 2nd you will see a $1 Atlantis Sample Proof they made up to sell to them. (These are made with the metals used in regular tokens) I lucked out and found these beauties to add to my collection. Below those you will see 2 Die Trial Strikes made up for the “Reel Winners Club” aluminum tokens they had at Atlantis. The backs of both are not finished. You can see a faint copy of the other side. One has large letters on the top and the other small. Very nice find! One happy camper here! It just goes to show you that 33 years later stuff still comes out of the woodwork.

The Playboy Hotel, Atlantic City was developed and built in 1981 by Hugh Heffner’s Playboy Enterprises and Elsinore Corporation. Playboy already operated a casino in London and was looking to exploit the new Atlantic City gaming market.

Las Vegas architect Martin Stern, Jr. had already established himself in Atlantic City with proposals for Del Webb’s Sahara Boardwalk, another MGM Grand, and Bill Harrah’s Marina (of these the Marina was the only one that was built). Stern designed a green glass tower with a three-level casino for Playboy, but had to shorten the tower from its original 33 stories to 22 after the Federal Aviation Board claimed that it would impede local air traffic.

The casino suffered financial difficulties from the start, and was eventually sold outright to Elsinore Corporation. The name was changed to the Atlantis Hotel and Casino in 1984, but the property went bankrupt in 1985. Donald Trump bought it in 1989, and closed the casino to operate the property solely as a hotel named the Trump Regency. The property was re-opened in 1996 as the Worlds’ Fair at Trump Plaza, but after three years of failure, the entire building was demolished.