RE San Francisco card rooms vs card clubs....In my opinion the chips from card rooms are not distinguishable from the chips of card clubs. Usually had the initials of the operator on them or some such. However: card clubs were legal in San Francisco until about 1951 when the district attorney got tired of trying to determine whether or not such and such a club was a social club (legal) or a cardroom (illegal) so they were all shut down. Most chips from SF are probably from clubs that were operating legally at the time.