Getting Started by Michael Knapp
Have you ever played a game in a casino and taken a close look at the chips you played with at the table? How about the silver dollar-like tokens you won from the slot machines? Just imagine how much money has been won and lost with those chips and tokens. And try to imagine who has played with them, from casual vacationers to movie stars, jet setters and other famous people.
That's part of the romance of gambling, and of the chips and tokens used in casinos.
It's that mystique, as well as the monetary aspects of chips and tokens, their design qualities, their variety, and the history behind them, that attracts people to collecting casino chips and tokens as others collect stamps or coins.
Collecting casino memorabilia isn't limited to chips and tokens; some collect glass panels from slot machines, casino ashtrays and matchbook covers, casino playing cards, dice, slot club cards (which are similar in appearance to telephone calling cards), key chains, and just about anything else used in casinos. Members of the Casino Chip & Gaming Token Collectors Club (CC>CC) collect everything casino related. Not only do club members collect, they trade among each other to expand their collections beyond geographical areas. There are also established chip and token dealers and regular auctions are held, both on the Internet and at the
club's annual convention in Las Vegas each year.
But how does one get started collecting casino chips, tokens and memorabilia? Actually,
it's easy. One of the major advantages of collecting casino chips and tokens is that a decent and enjoyable collection can easily be amassed without the expenditure of vast sums of money. Casinos or card rooms exist in several states, many of them in the Midwest. Other states are poised on the brink of opening new gaming venues. In the Midwest, most of us are not more than three hours away from a casino. Any collector can walk into a casino and for $6, add a $1 and a $5 chip to his collection. Some casinos still use fractional chips: 10¢, 25¢ and 50¢ chips. Collecting need not be expensive, but it is always interesting.
Casino chip collecting predates the formation of CC>CC by many years. Not until the legalization of casino gambling in Nevada in 1931, however, were casino chips really used to advertise the casinos in which they were used. Prior to that time, most casinos in the United States were illegal clubs, and it was not always in their best interests to advertise their locations or operations. Now, however, casinos recognize that their chips are valuable pieces of advertising and good will. The growth of the chip collecting hobby has also made casinos aware of the profit potential of their chips. Every chip that is taken home after being purchased at a table for $5, for example, results in a clear profit to the casino of more than $4 in many cases.
That's much more than the casino can expect to win in a game of 21 or craps on a $5 wager.
Founded in 1987, CC>CC now has more than 2,700 active members from every state and from several foreign countries as well. The club holds its annual convention in Las Vegas each year. This year it is at the Tropicana Hotel on the Strip, on June 26, 27 and 28. The show floor will be jam-packed with more than 80 dealer tables and collectors from virtually everywhere.
It's the largest casino collectibles show in the world.
As with any other collectible, casino chip values vary with demand, supply, and condition. Only last year, the highest price paid for a single chip at auction was over $15,000, the successful bid for what is believed to be a chip
mis-manufactured for the Hacienda Hotel (now the site of Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas), and thought to be the only one of its kind now in existence.
While chip prices, when the club was formed, tended not to exceed $100 very often, now values in the thousands are more common. On the other hand, established casino chip dealers regularly offer some $100 chips from closed casinos, at only $20 each. They are obviously in much greater supply, and their availability is reflected in their price.
The CC>CC is the best possible introduction to the hobby that a new collector can have. Its quarterly magazine, Casino Chip and Token News, which averages 100 pages or more, is the
collector's bible. It contains feature articles about new issues; the history of chips, tokens and the casinos that issued them; identification of
"maverick" chips and tokens; club news; industry news; and advertisements by dealers and collectors wishing to sell or trade.
The literature of chip and token collecting is also expanding as rapidly as the hobby itself. Books for beginning collectors are available, as are books for more experienced collectors. Books that help in identifying chips and tokens, and on the history of casinos are available. There are even recent price guides to the value of casino chips of Nevada and New Jersey, and of casino ashtrays, with more such guides in the planning stages. Only one warning is in order: chip collecting is addictive.
For information about chip collecting and about membership in the Casino Chip & Gaming Token Collectors Club, you may send a stamped, self-addressed, business-size envelope to Michael Knapp, CC>CC, P. O. Box 340345, Columbus, Ohio 43234.
Illegal Clubs of the Midwest by Michael Knapp
Now you know how to get started collecting casino memorabilia, and the myriad of chips readily available from the tribal casinos in the Midwest. But
there's also a wealth of historical material well within the reach of the average collector: chips from the multitude of illegal clubs and casinos that flourished in the Midwest from around the turn of the century up through the 1940s, 1950s, and even into the early 1960s.
Most illegal clubs in the Midwest got their start just as Prohibition was ending. The organized crime interests that supplied illicit beer and liquor throughout the area found that the end of Prohibition would mean a vast decrease in their revenue flow. One of the ways they replaced that revenue was by opening and running gambling clubs and casinos, some of which were plush showplaces that featured top-name entertainment and honest casino games. Others were "bust-out
joints," small casinos that made sure, through gaffed games and
"card
mechanic' dealers, that few patrons ever won.
The Midwest was also one of the foremost training grounds for professional gamblers who would later help to develop some of the largest and best-known casinos in Nevada. The history behind the chips and the clubs that used them is one of the most fascinating aspects of casino chip collecting. Illegal clubs flourished in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, and many of the chips used in those casinos are available to collectors today, more than 50 years later.
Gambling in the Detroit/Toledo area, for example, came under the aegis of
Detroit's Purple Gang, the gambling czar of which was a man by the name of Lincoln Fitzgerald. Some of those chips are shown
here
from the Detroit (top) and Toledo (bottom) areas. When the light shined on illegal clubs by the United States
Senate's Kefauver Committee (1950-1952) became too bright, many of the clubs began to shut down. In the late 1940s, Fitzgerald left the increasingly uncomfortable Midwest for the greener pastures of Nevada, which had legalized casino gaming in 1931.
When he arrived in Reno, Fitzgerald bought into the Nevada Club, and also bought the Little Nevada Club (later to become the Nevada Lodge) at Lake Tahoe. Many years later, Fitzgerald would build
Fitzgerald's Hotel in Reno as well, eventually opening a Fitzgerald's in Las Vegas. When he left Michigan for Nevada, Fitzgerald took some of the old Chesterfield Club chips with him. In fact, the center chip in the top row
- the CC chip - was used in Nevada as a $1 chip at the Tahoe Nevada Club before Fitzgerald could get chips made for the casino.
All of the chips in the photo, as well as many more from the Detroit/Toledo area, are available to the chip collector interested in illegal club chips from the Midwest.
Perhaps the most wide-open towns for illegal gambling in the Midwest were Newport and Covington, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati. Most of the clubs in Northern Kentucky were owned outright, operated by, or paying protection to the Cleveland mob, which controlled gambling in Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky. River Downs Racetrack was another of the Cleveland
outfit's interests in the area.
Chips from Northern Kentucky. (top from left) Beverly Hills Club, Flamingo Club (633 Club), Glenn Rendezvous, Glenn Schmidt Club, (bottom) Kentucky Club, Lookout H House and Merchants Club
Shown are only a few of the chips still in existence and collected by chip fanatics from around the country. Stories about the clubs themselves, about the characters who owned and operated them, and about the gamblers who frequented them, are numerous and fascinating. The Beverly Hills Supper Club, for example, was a fancy establishment with a huge casino floor and top-notch national entertainment when Las Vegas was still a dusty cowboy town and Reno was the largest city in Nevada.
The Cleveland mob's man in charge of gambling in much of Ohio and Northern Kentucky was Moe
Dalitz, who went on to own the Desert Inn, the Stardust, and several other hotels in Las Vegas, and who became a philanthropic pillar of the Las Vegas community. In fact, pictured here.
Here side by side are chips from (on the left) the Stardust Club in Newport, Kentucky (a difficult chip to obtain these days), and one of the original chips from the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, which Dalitz opened in 1958. The similarity of the logos is unmistakable.
Casinos that operated on the other side of the law were run by Al Capone and his gang in Chicago, East St. Louis, East Cape
Girardeaux, and many other towns in Illinois. The Jeffersonville/French Lick area of Indiana was another hotbed of illegal gambling clubs, especially in the 1930s.
With the advent of riverboat gambling in the Midwest, casinos in this area once again operate openly, but this time legally rather than on the basis of payoffs from organized crime to local law enforcement. In East Peoria, Illinois, for example, the Para-Dice Club ran illegally during the 1940s and 1950s, but in 1991 the Par-A-Dice riverboat casino, named to carry on the tradition of casino gambling in the area, opened legally in East Peoria, and the saga of East Peoria gambling came full circle.
Collecting casino chips doesn't have to be just a matter of going into the many Midwest Tribal or riverboat casinos; it can be a historical quest for antiques as well. As most collectors soon discover, once they have the little pieces of clay and plastic in their hands, the urge to research what
they've found becomes very strong indeed. While researching illegal casinos can be frustrating at times
- for obvious reasons they weren't in a position to do too much overt advertising
- it can also lead to fascinating discoveries about one's own home area. If
you're in the Midwest, chances are at least one illegal casino operated very near you at one time. Happy hunting.
For information about chip collecting and about membership in the Casino Chips & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club, you may send a stamped, self-addressed, business-size envelope to Michael Knapp, CC>CC, P. O. Box 340345, Columbus, Ohio 43234. |Top|
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