Thanks Greg for that lead. I should probably email Doug Saito to ask him about that. Do you know in which auction Doug made that connection?

I think it is possible that Doug might have been relying on a old post from Gene Trimble, where he hypothesized that there was a Penn Specialty, Robin Specialties, Portland Card Company type of chronology in relation to ownership of the Square in Circle mold. They all seem connected because they all sold Square in Circle chips, and appeared to have nearly identical catalogs.

Below you can better see how the catalog pages that Herz reproduced are nearly identical to the pages in a Robin Specialties catalog. The two images to the left are from a Robin Specialties catalog, and the image to the right is from Herz. I've seen photos of an interior of a Portland Card Co. catalog, and that page was identical except that it referred to "Virg's Sail Boat Check", instead of "Robin's Sail Boat Check".

The problem is that according to the grandson, Penn Specialty was most active during the 1950s and the 1960s and he thinks his grandfather sold chips and dice into the mid or late 1970s. He passed away in 1980. That seems too late for Penn Specialty to have been sold to or to have become the Portland Card Company. Those catalogs pre-date the end of the company.

I suppose that it is possible that Penn Specialty during the early years was a type of affiliate outlet for the Portland Card Company, and I asked him about that, and he knew of no connection between his grandfather and Portland.