So I'm at Harrah's last week cashing in a bunch of old limited edition chips. The cashier takes all the $5's and $25's with the usual "are you sure you want to cash these in as they are worth a lot of money?" (Wish I had a dollar for every cashier that told me that... now THAT WOULD be A LOT of money !). But then she stops and says "I've never seen these before and I've been here 14 years and I'm the backup cage supervisor". I tell her that I think they are from the late 90's (turns out TCR says 1996). She was referring to these:

She calls her supervisor over and that woman is also is not familiar with them. She knows for certain that they are discontinued but is unsure if they are still redeemable. "I need to send an email to the corporate office" she says and runs off to the podium and starts frantically typing. We wait... and wait... and wait. Finally she says "I don't know why they haven't emailed me back, I'm going to call". She does. Finally she says something to the cashier who says to me "there are less than 3,000". So I'm thinking, 3000? Do you know how many that is? That's a HUGE number, probably like five chips for every collector that even wants higher denominations. But the supervisor overhears her tell me this and quickly clarifies that it is less than 3,000 DOLLARS. There are only 147 that escaped the grinder she claims. She goes on to tell me that they were used in baccarat but I'm thinking I got them from the poker room (but then again I can't remember last month much less 17 years ago when I likely picked these up!). I believe they ARE still redeemable BUT now that I know there are only 147 in existence I figure I should probably just keep them rather than push the issue. I thank her for her time and leave with my $20 chips.

So last night I put one of them up on . I started the auction at $.99 for the fun of it. Perhaps it'll go for more than the $20 face value but maybe it'll go for less. Either way, I got a good story out of last week's reverse-chip-run.

Here's a link to the auction: http://bit.ly/HG08iS

Dave
Cheques in the Mail, Inc.