Boy, it seems like the phrase “When it rains it pours” is never more true than when it comes to finding illegals. I’ll go months and months with nothing, then it just seems like there is a flood. In the last couple of months, Dallas, Texas has been my object of windfalls. In it, some new finds.

In some chips I got just a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky to find not only a couple of never before seen chips, but also a rare attribution that I think seems pretty solid.

The above chips I believe were used in the Top O’ Hill Terrace in Arlington, Texas, and let me tell you how I come to that.

First things first… The Mason records show these to be ordered by:

Ivy Miller
Southland Hotel
Dallas, TX
1943

Ivy Miller, and the Southland Hotel, has been a subject of a few IOTD writeups as well as an article I wrote for the CCTN a couple years ago. To make a VERY short summary, Benny Binion (of Las Vegas Horseshoe Casino fame) ran the gambling in Dallas, Texas. His partner, hitman, and right hand man was Ivy Miller, who ordered numerous chips from Mason which were delivered to the Southland Hotel. There is a RICH history for Binion and Miller, but I’m not going to re-tread. Let’s move on…

A few months ago, I had to make a trip to the Dallas area and decided to swing by the old Top O’ Hill Terrace in Arlington (between Dallas and Fort Worth). The site used to have an extremely upscale casino run by a gambler named Fred Browning. (The history of the TOH is interesting, and it is on my list of casinos to cover in what should be a future CCTN article.)

Browning ran the club and made a lot of money from it. Had his only interest been running the TOH, he would have retired a very rich man, unfortunately for him, he had a weakness for the horses – both raising and betting. Unlike craps, he couldn’t control the odds and fell far into debt. Benny Binion, always looking for good investments, purchased Browning’s IOU notes and exchanged them for interests in the Top O’ Hill Terrace.

To help run the club, and keep an eye on his investment, Binion sent some of his Dallas gamblers over to Arlington to run the games – including Ivy Miller who ran the craps.

So why do I place these particular “RM” chips with the TOH when there are SO MANY other chips sent to the Southland Hotel? Here is what I know…

In the early 1950s, Fred Browning dies and the Top O Hill was purchased by a bible college (ironic, yea, I know, there is an interesting story there too… for later). In renovations of the downstairs casino, there were two chips found on site – “FB” diamond mold and a “RM” hub. The “FB” no doubt stands for Fred Browning, but the “RM” chip was never identified and thus not publicized. In the various books written about the TOH and the website, you can see the “FB” diamond mold chip. If you actually go the bible college today, you can see a display case with three chips in it – FB, RM, and RIS. As mentioned earlier, the FB and RM came from the site itself. The third chip, “RIS” is a hub that was also sent to the Southland Hotel. According to the resident historian at the Top O Hill, the RIS was given to the college as a gift from a gambler to “said” is was used at the TOH. Although I can’t disprove a negative, I can’t in good conscience say I think it’s a firm attribution with just a word-of-mouth.

Then secondly, the chips I got came to me through another channel. It seems a guy in Virginia was given these “RM” chips from his uncle who “used to do work for the Southland group back in the day.” This uncle, who didn’t elaborate on what “work”, told his nephew they were used in the Top O Hill. This nephew, knowing NOTHING about chips or Mason records or the Top O Hill contacts the historian at the TOH asking if she would be interested in buying them. Being a non-profit, she said they couldn’t afford to buy them, but would “be glad to accept them as a donation.” The seller refused. Since the TOH historian and myself had been in contact for a while. She gave the seller my number. We came to a deal and that’s how I got them.

So, let’s break it down.
1) We have chips ordered by Ivy Miller, who definitely worked at the Top O Hill Terrace looking after Benny Binion’s interests.
2) One of the “RM” chips was found at the TOH during renovations, but not publicized.
3) An independent seller, going on a story given to him by a family member, was told they were TOH.

To be honest, the second item with them being found on site is the key. The other two are pretty circumstantial, but all together it’s pretty compelling.

I’ve been pretty lax with posting some of these chip finds, but will this weekend in case some of you are interesting in purchasing some.

The “RM” were listed earlier, but there are more which I will probably list here. Stay tuned…

In the meantime, I have a few Dallas and Galveston chips listed already:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/ehertel/m.html?item=283614412657&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562