Hey Bill,

Perhaps it was my posts about the "It's a Dry Heat" chips. I had put a couple on Ebay, and had written here on the chipboard that in my opinion, it was my favorite set. To this day, the $5.00 Dry Heat chip is my favorite. The $2.50's are a close second.

My favorite chips to collect are Obsolete Nevadas followed by caribbean chips.

It all started years ago when I went to Vegas for the first time. I went with my favorite (and only) uncle. Somehow I had forgotten to turn in three $1.00 chips from the Maxim Casino. I threw them in my dresser junk drwer and decided to turn them in on the next trip.

Well, year after year I remembered the chips after I got to Vegas. Yes, I remembered that I forgot to bring the damned things again! This went on year after year until finally...I remembered them! I put them in a little plastic bag and taped them to my airline tickets. I arrived to Vegas, and took them to the Maxim only to discover that the Maxim had just closed the casino three days prior to my arrival.

At that point, I had the very first chips in my collection, and they also just happened to be obsoletes. I didn't know at that point that I had a collection, but the decision was made then, that keeping it as a momento was very very cool. That trip, I started picking up a few other chips here and there when the mood hit.

I still have my prized Maxim chip. It's not particularly valuable, in fact the TCR value just finally went up from "B" to "C".

My real collecting began when my friend and I decided to walk the entire strip...both sides with three goals. We were going to 1) hit every casino on the strip. 2) we had to win at least $1.00 at each casino 3) we had to get an alcoholic beverage at each casino. To summarize our goal, we were going to have every casino on the strip pay us to drink their booze.

We walked the strip and took our $1.00 chip from each casino. It was easy winning just a dollar. It's when you set higher hopes that you run into trouble.

As for that many drinks...no problem for me. I was drinking rum and cokes. Free coctails in the casinos are typically very weak. As for my friend, he was drinking rum and cokes for the first few casinos, then made the mistake of switching to beer. Needless to say after hitting the next five casinos in less then an hour he was getting totally trashed. That was when we decided to take a break and have lunch. For some reason, he decided to go back to rum and cokes for the rest of the adventure.

We finished off the strip, (three miles each way) with a fine collection of $1.00 chips and story we both still tell to this day.