Several years ago my husband and I were walking down a row of tables at an antique/collectible show in Sandwich, Illinois. We stopped at one table, to check out a bunch of shot glasses. Suddenly we both noticed a framed 8x10 chip display!! We picked it up and counted 28 chips…an assortment of $1 chips, plus a few .50 chips. We’d been in the hobby for a few years, but our speciality was still ashtrays at that time. I was somewhat familiar with some chip prices, from studying various magazines and auction catalogs, but the adrenaline rush I got when looking at the chips turned my brain to mush!! George asked me what some of the chips were worth, and I couldn’t remember a single price! The one chip that I focused on was a 4 Queens $1 arodie chip. I pointed it out to George and said “I know that’s a good one!” He asked how much it was worth. My answer: “I don’t remember…I only remember looking at it in a catalog and thinking we’d never have one, because we’d never spend that much for a chip!” At that, he started negotiating with the seller. They settled on $75.

After we finished walking the aisles, we headed for the car. I had a price guide in the car and started looking up prices…I was over the moon! To the best of my recollection, at that time the 4 Queens chip listed around $250, there was a $1 Lady Luck chip that listed over $200, and I think the .50 Flamingo Capri listed around $100! Other chips were more common, but what a thrill! The bad news is that the chips were placed on a background of black velvet, and the inlays of some of the chips were discolored from it. I vaguely remember there being something on the backing that said the chips were collected on a vacation in Las Vegas, during the Chicago snowstorm of January 1967…something like that, anyway.

**NOTE: I remember some of the chips that were in the frame, others I can figure out because of the discoloration, but there are some missing from the picture