The Radio City Rockettes opened a long term engagement at the Flamingo Hilton in 1995 titled "The Great Radio City Spectacular" that ran for 4-5 years in the Flamingo Showroom. They had "guest hosts" that performed with the Rockettes including Susan Anton, Maurice Hines, Paige O'Hara and Marlene Ricci.

Of course the hotel wanted to promote the show so they had PaulSon do 50,000 of the $5 chip in question. Will Hart, the in house artist at PaulSon, designed the chip. The Flamingo takes delivery and puts them out on the tables. There wasn't a big rush from us chippers to pick them up as there was 50,000 of them!

Well, there were a couple of minor problems with the chips. First, look close and you'll notice that there is no trademark (TM) on the chip in question as there is on the set of the other chips. And second and more importantly, the hotel never had permission from the Rockettes to produce the chips. The hotel was foreced to pull them all and eventually destroy them. The estimates have always been that only about 300 of them got out and survived the destruction. The number sets were approved by the Rockettes after this fiasco.

I know most of this because I was in the hotel the weekend that it happened. My buddies in the dice pit called up in the room and told me what was happening. Of course I made a bee line for the casino floor and spent the next several hours going from table to table that were still open (it was 2-3 am) trying to get as many of the chips as possible. By the time the day shift came on, they were all off the tables and they wouldn't sell you any out of the cage.

As a side note, there was at the same time, a $10.00 Silver Strike (pictured below) in the machines and they too were pulled and my understanding is they were destroyed. As far as I know, there are fewer of the SS out there than there are the chips. Hope this helps!