On October 15, 1969, a little over a year after the Aruba-Sheraton opened, the Holiday Inn opened a fair distance up Palm Beach at 230 JE Irausquin Blvd. Aruba has hotels and resorts that do not have casinos, but I believe these were the first three resorts. The main City in Aruba is Orangestad. In Orangestad, two hotels opened before the Aruba Caribbean, The Coral Strand (or The Strand, at different times) and the Talk of the Town. It was not until the resorts were built that Aruba began to have casinos.

The Holiday Inn opened with a self-named casino, as had the two previous resorts. The casino was run by Clifford Jones and Jake Kozloff.

You can see the distinctive CJ/JK they often used throughout the Caribbean, which we saw on the dice of the Aruba Caribbean. Note that on one chip, those initials have been scratched off. Initially, those were the only Holiday Inn $1 chips, but since then, pristine chips have surfaced. I don't believe anyone knows why the initials were scratched off.

When I posted that last postcard on an Aruba bulletin board many years ago, people recognized the chef, who had worked in Aruba for many decades. Also, of note, is that you can make out which chips are being used in the casino portion:

It's the same $1 chip!

Michael Siskin