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) tale I just have to tell............With a young family I have no chance of making the convention anytime soon so almost all my chips are purchased from ebay or bought & traded with you guys here on the board. Occasionally, and I mean VERY occassionally, I may run into someone who has some Aussie chips in a drawer at home & I end up bagging them but those encounters are very rare. So when I received an ebay message from someone in NSW saying "ring me about chips" I thought he was just enquiring about the dupes I'd listed for sale. WRONG!!!
To cut a long story short(ish). He rang me within 10 minutes of getting my phone number. 4 phone calls & 3 hours later I was on a plane to Sydney, New South Wales (I'm in Adelaide, South Australia, so about a 2 hour flight). After hitting Star City Casino & staying overnight I met up with him at his shop in the morning. So there I sit in a loft in a shop in an outer suburb of Sydney with 6 medium sized boxes sitting in front of me while the guy starts telling me....
The gentleman passes away 3 months ago in his mid to lat 70's. Rich father left him 5 million which he inherited when he was around 40. Spent the next 30years finding every way he knew to blow it all. Basically just travelled the world. He was a mad gambler & collector of anything that wasn't nailed down & went wherever he knew there was a casino. Out the back of the shop was a 20ft shipping container (still 3/4 full) chocked to the roof with boxes (I saw it!!!!). As they find boxes of something they try to sell them before moving to the next thing. Already they'd sold over 250 model planes you buy from airline flights, 24,000 phone cards, all sorts of hotel stuff like towels, pens, paper etc. & heaps more. Apparently the gentleman said to his business partner (who inherited everything) that it will take you 2 years to get rid of me after I'm gone...and he made sure of it. Even when they crack open a box that has old magazines, papers & junk in it they can't just throw it a away. Reason: the first box with that stuff in it they were tipping into the dumpster & 2 $100 US notes came floating out. Seems he's stashed them in almost every box so far!!!!
Anyway, I ended up getting the collection. There ended up being just under 2000 chips & over 600 tokens. All from a period between the late 70's to a few years ago. By far the biggest colection I think I'll ever have the chance to purchase in Australia, and I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity.
The last 3 days have been spend going through them & identifying them. Luckily for me he had a lot of them in 20slot pages with the country written on a sheet behind it. Without that my "chip ID" posts would be starting to come thick and fast.
All in all there's about 600 chips & 200 tokens from Nevada, 350 chips from Australia, 250 chips & 100 tokens from cruise lines as well as chips & tokens from about 50 other countries including.....
Botswana
Panama
North Cyprus
Estonia
Madagascar
Vanuatu
Malta
Noumea
Bulgaria
Coasta Rica
South Africa
Hungary
Sri Lanka
UK
China
Morocco
Austria
Georgia
Peru
Zimbabwe
Gibraltar
Aruba
Kenya
Malaysia
Latvia
Isle of Man
Seychelles
Greece
Egypt
Armenia
Monaco
Netherlands
Curacao
Mauritius
Canada
Poland
Turkey
Nepal
Ecuador
Holland
Honduras
Antigua
Swaziland
Bahamas
Zambia
Phillipines
Paraguay
Chile
Nambia
Yugolslavia
Puerto Rico
and some other unknowns.
So here's the pics after I've finshed doing a bit of preliminary sorting. As some of you guys would say. WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! 
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