About 1993, I received a response from my ad in "The Antique Trader" for old casino chips. It was from a Florida shop owner who had bought a box or two of 4 different Last Frontier chips. I do not know if Steve's contact is from the same group of chips, but it is probable.

One year previously, I had bought 190 $100 Last Frontier/21 Club, SM-KEY die-cut metal wafer chips that were unknown in the hobby at that time. I traded and sold them for $150-200 each and finally sold the last 50 to Jerry Wall for $5000. He was selling them at the same rate that I had been.

In the first club auction, about 1992, there was a set of the Last Frontier Crest & Seal chips, one each of the 1, 5, 25 & 100, all four chips were drilled. The "1" that Steve is offering is the same as the "1" in this set, except they are undrilled. The club auction set was the first of its kind that we had seen and I haven't seen it since. The four chip set sold for $1300, as a one of a kind.

The owner of the box plus, in Florida, got a copy of "The Chip Rack" and saw the value listed at $300. I tried to explain that the 300. was because there was only one chip known. When a box or more is found, even though they were undrilled, they were not worth 300. each. I could not afford to buy the chips from him but I put him in contact with others who could. I told him that if he was in no hurry that he could put an ad in the club magazine and offer them at his price. I suggested $150 each for the 1 Last Frontier, C&S. Remember that this was over ten years ago and $150 was a lot of money for any chip in those days.

The dealer called some of the contacts that I had given him. Jerry Wall offered $35,000 for the lot. I thought that was a very generous offer, but this guy was listening to his shop-owner friends, who told him that he should get $70,000 for the chips.

A few months later, when he couldn't get his price, he decided to take my suggestion and put a full page ad in our club magazine. His photocopies were so poor that the chips were difficult to see in his ad. I offered to help him but he refused. He sold a few chips at his price to collectors like Gene Grossblatt, who had to have every chip and money was of no object.

We had listed the Last Frontier "1" in TCR at an (O), since there were over a box of them found. The owner of the chips became very upset with me and threatened to sue under the Taft-Hartly price control laws. I told him that we weren't setting any prices, merely offering an estimate of what we thought they should sell for. That was the last I have heard about these chips until Steve's post yesterday.

I think that $180 is a very fair value for this chip in today's world. We did not raise the value in TCR during the past 10 years because we had not heard of any additional sales.