Well, it was a mystery to me, anyway. I have three different tokens from the Aruba-Sheraton, dated 1968, 1980 and 1981. I had not really given too much thought to them until I just got the 1981 token from Tim Harry's great chip find. You see, the second token looks just like the first, except it says "Grand Casino" at the bottom of the obverse side. The third token was made just a year later, has a completely different obverse, but has the same reverse. This time, the words "Grand Casino" are missing on the obverse, and the word "Casino" is placed above the rim area on the reverse side. All three tokens are shown in the pictoral guide under the Aruba Sheraton section, with numbers that indicate that they are all from the Aruba Sheraton Casino. Well, I knew there was a Grand Casino in Aruba, and I believed it was in the Aruba Sheraton Hotel, but I had not looked at Ralph Pollack's guide about it, and there aren't any chips or tokens attributed to it on the new on-line Caribbean guide (at least, not yet). So, I checked my timeline, and noticed that the Aruba Sheraton opened in 1968 (when the first token was issued), the Grand Casino replaced the Aruba Sheraton Casino in 1980 (when the second token was issued) and one year later, the Grand Casino was replaced by the Hart Casino (when the third token was issued). I also noticed that the new obverse design on the 1981 token matched the design on the Hart Casino chips (a design also used in several Casinos from Curacao, which I believe were run by the same people). I checked the picture guide and found all three listed under Aruba Sheraton Casino, but I was sure that each token was from a different casino. Of course, I never looked under the Grand and Hart casinos until I had made my discovery. Sure enough, Ralph had also listed the 1980 token under the Grand Casino (along with 2 higher denomination chips I have never seen, and are not on the on-line guide), and the 1981 token under the Hart Casino. Ralph had also given each of these tokens a guide number indicating they were from the Grand or Hart Casinos (a bit confusing). Mystery, small as it was, solved! If you check out the Caribbean guide, you will find all three chips now listed under the proper casinos (thanks, Charles). So, here are the tokens, along with some $1 chips they may have been used with:

Aruba Sheraton Casino -

Grand Casino -

Hart Casino -

Hope you enjoyed my mystery (such as it was). I hope you could see all of the images. I am not very good at scanning tokens.

Michael Siskin