Yeah, another three-fer. It's tough to find stuff from 79 JE Irausquin!

At some point, the Aruba Palm Beach became the Aruba Grand, but I don't know when. I suspect, the first of these, and possibly the second were still at the Aruba Palm Beach.

Some time during 1984, the Aruba Palm Beach Casino became the Palm Casino. I know little about this casino, and have never seen a picture of it.

The $1 chip is the hardest to find, which is not saying much. It's a somewhat common chip, but the other denominations are available in playable sets, with thousands of chips out there. One year, an ebay seller showed up with what he claimed is a no cash value chip that came from the Palm Casino. Unlike almost all Aruba chips, it does not say Aruba on it. The seller swore it came from a storage space with a lot of the other Palm chips. Ralph Pollack did not list it in his guides. So...who knows?

I have never run across anyone who claims to have played with one, but Aruba has historically given away match play chips at timeshare presentations, so it's possible. In my opinion, the attribution remains doubtful, or at least questionable. That's all I have for the Palm Casino, which is strange for a casino that lasted 15 years.

Next, in 1999, the casino became the Merengue Casino. The Merengue Casino continued to use the Palm Casino chips (a start of a trend at this casino). According to Ralph Pollack, the only thing they issued with the casino name on it was a single token. I have never seen any of these tokens for sale, or even outside of Ralph's guides. I assume they continued to use playing cards and dice from previous casinos. This is the only Aruba casino for which I have nothing. Literally anything were be a real thrill to acquire.

In 2000, the casino became the Centurion Casino. The hotel had changed to the Aruba Grand by this time. My first trip to Aruba came in 2002. The people I was with did not like the Centurion and refused to go there. It has never been one of the nicer casinos in Aruba. When I later came back, the whole hotel was boarded up and being massively renovated. So, I have never been to a casino at 79 JE Irausquin.

The Centurion used the $5, $25 and $100 chips from the Aruba Palm Beach. They used a token for their $1 chips. I don't know which token they used. My one collectible from the Centurion, came from Jim Gagnon. Jim and I hit the Chip Board at the same time and became friends. He hosted the NE Chipper's Gatherings I organized long ago. A very nice guy, Jim no longer collects casino chips. Anyway, he traded me:

Here are some borrowed images:

Here is Terry Schaffer's photo of the hotel sign:

Tomorrow, we finish with 79 JE Irausquin.

Michael Siskin