I had been into the Sands 3 weeks before they closed. I intended to keep a chip as a souvenir, but I had the worst luck I’ve ever had in a casino that last day. Left for home frustrated. I was walking through the Tropicana 2 years later and stumbled into the gift shop at the end of the Hall of Fame. I saw this $1 Sands chip, chuckled to myself and promptly paid several times its face value. By the end of that day, I had convinced myself I needed one from all of the places I had wandered into and had about a dozen by the time I went to sleep. That’s when it all started for me.