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The Chip Board Archive 20

What history?

Judy, this would be a hugely neat chip - if it were authentic. I don't believe it is.

It's true that Wyatt Earp was co-owner (with Charles Hoxie) of the Dexter Saloon for a couple of years or so - 1897-1899 or 1900. It closed in 1902 and reopened later as the New Eldorado Saloon. That much is history.

But does this chip (scan below borrowed from the auction) have anything to do with Earp or the Dexter Saloon? I don't think so, for several reasons.

First, it was very uncommon for frontier saloons to have their own chips. Most often the gaming tables were leased out to operators (Earp was one, in Tombstone and other places, in fact), and usually they brought their own equipment, including chips, with them. When saloons did have chips available for their patrons to play poker with, they were generic, unmarked chips so that each group of players could assign their own values to them.

Second, if a high-toned saloon (and I'm not sure the Dexter was one) was going to have their own identified chips, it would be uncommon for them to put denominations on them. (See above.) Furthermore, they would most likely have ordered ivory chips, not bone, which was an inexpensive and rather uncommon material for chips. The ivories would have been engraved with the saloon's initials or the owners' initials, not full names usually, or they would have had generic designs.

Third, in the 1880's, USPC and others introduced what we now refer to as "clay" or "composition" chips. They could be personalized (crest & seal, for example) or purchased in intricate molded designs that were very difficult to counterfeit. They were also far less expensive than ivory chips, if less elegant. Because they were more readily available and less expensive and had a better feel and weight, they virtually displaced bone chips as an alternative to ivory.

Fourth, it is extremely rare to find a bone chip with more than a scratched-in (engraved) denomination number or a fairly simple geometric border design. Bone is fragile. It's light and insubstantial. Unlike ivory chips, the labor involved to engrave bone chips would not have been economically feasible. The finished product just wouldn't have been worth enough to justify the intensive labor required to engrave them. Bone chips were not "hotstamped," as the auction description indicates.

Fifth, this same chip (or one identical to it) has surfaced before. Your reference to a previous post is an example. There is nothing in the post that claims specific provenance for the chip, and frankly I'd distrust it if there were. If there were a hoard of Dexter Saloon chips somewhere, the collecting community - antique collectors, frontier collectors, etc., even if not casino chip collectors - would likely know about it. No one does, to my knowledge.

Bottom line, in my opinion, it's a nice, romantic fake. But it's still a fake.

Michael

Messages In This Thread

Love the history on this chip..
Here's an old post about the chip...
Too Bad.....
There's always Mothers Day!
Apr 22 = Earth day...what better way...
What history?
Re: What history?
Definitely looks like two different chips
Looks to be hot stamped not carved...
Since we know of so few examples ~~~
Alaska's Digital Archives; pics of chips-gambling:
Pic is here:
...and click "next" for gambling hall pic
Link here:
Re: Since we know of so few examples ~~~
The magazine article stating $1,100 ~~~
Skip collects reproduction machine guns
Re: Great history lesson Michael.

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