I just returned from a mini 1-week chip run to the Bay area and some other California card rooms with a very interesting discovery.

For those of you who collect California chips, you may remember that Sonoma Joe's in Petaluma was sold to Jok-erz Wild. After a few attempts to make it go, The Jok-erz Wild Casino was once again sold to someone else. And lo and behold, what do you suppose the name of the new club is going to be. For those of you who guessed Sonoma Joe's again, you collect to booby prize.

The banner with Sonoma Joe's name is presently displayed on the building of Jok-erz Wild and new chips will be issued. Those of you in the area might want to hold on to what you have of the present Jok-erz Wild chips (a picture of the $1.00 chip is shown below.) They only have 4 of the $0.25¢ chips left out of an initial run of 500. According to the floormen, a lot of people were saving them.

Also pictured below is the new $1.00 chip from the Table Mountain Indian Casino in Friant, about 35 miles northeast of Fresno. (and yes, I happen to have a few for trade.)

My attached tradelist will be updated by tomorrow evening, (I hope)

I was playing in the Lucky Derby card room in Sacramento and as I was gathering a bunch of chips from the cage, the fellow in the cage introduced me to a collector standing right next to me. Come to find out, he is a member of the CC>CC and is on line but not active in on line trading. I promised to send him Greg's Web Page URL (which I will do tonight) and hope many of you will give him a warm greeting if and when he gets up enough nerve to "jump in." His name is D'Jack Klinger. A real nice fellow and fair trader.

In any case, I met with him the following evening and made some great trades. Bottom Line. Let everyone you know that you are a chip collector. One never knows what may happen.

By the way, made so other great trades from other casinos along the way by this same process.

I will attempt to answer all my e-mails by this evening so please have patience.