is known and documented in TCR. Although I have described this previously, instead of going to the archives, I'll repost what I have been told.

Several years ago (at least 4), the Colorado Belle found itself with a surlpus of Limted Edition $5 chips. It seemed that selling them from the cage did nothing to reduce their inventory.

They then decided to pull, nearly all the Bud Jones, CIC $5 chips from all games and placed them into racks and stored them in the main cage. Not in the "vault" but right there in the emplyoee side of the main cage. The many racks were plainly visable!

They then put all of their Limited Edition $5 chips into play. Only the poker room saw some of the CIC $5's and if they drifted from the poker room to the tables, they were pulled off and put back into the cage.

This went on for about 2 years, where the CIC's were in the cage and only LE's were on the tables. About a year or so ago, the CIC's made a return. I can only assume that te LE's walked away, which was the intent of the move.

Just prior to the CIC's being pulled, I frequented the Belle at least 6 times a year, as I was then driving to Vegas (from Tucson) more than I was flying. During those visits I befriened the late night cage manager.

He told me about the $5 CIC with 8 inserts (and also dot edge spots (instead of 8 dashes on the 12 insert version) that he had seen in the early days of the Belle. They were like a mythological chip! He knew he saw them, but some how they were gone.

Each time I visited, I would check with him to see if he had any foreign chips, i.e. chips redeemed from other casinos. And contrary to regulations, he would let me buy any I was interested in. At this same time, the Belle was purposely pulling their 50 cent chips and not letting them back into play.

He would sell me those 50 cent chips, knowing that they would not likely come back to the casino. They were pretty beat up, but I ended up with about 25 or so.

On one visit he was excited to see because he had found one of the 8 insert $5's! I bought (face + a toke) and started to see if anyone else had one. I talked with many a dealer at at least two Conventions, pouring through books looking for this earlier issue $5 chip. I found none! I asked dealers and collectors alike to look into their own collections for one of these chips and no one ever found one. I posted this several times on this BBS and still, no one had one.

When the Belle pulled all of the $5 CIC's, my contact went through every single rack and chip, which yielded two more examples. One had a hairline crack and the other had a loose retaining ring (the ring that keeps the CIC's in place).

Only the original find was a solid, intact specimin. I then decided to put the hairline crack chip into the Bruce Landau Memorial Auction. It sold, within the valuation noted in TCR (a copy is not in front of me at the moment).

Since that time, my contact no longer is employed there. The CIC's have been put back onto the tables, this is the first instance that I am aware of, of another one of these chips surfacing!

Without seeing both side of your chip, it is possible that you may have the one that was sold in auction. I have a scan some where, of that chip, and I'll see if I can locate it. Otherwise, you might want to look for the presence of a crack. As I recall, it ran from the edge of one of the CIC's, out toward the chip's edge, but faded away before reaching the edge.

Does anyone need a beat up, SUITS mold 50 center from the Belle?

Jim