Cool Chip of the Day: Agua Caliente

I won this Agua Caliente chip on eBay the other day with no real thought about where it was from. It's an attractive crest & seal, and that was primarily the reason I bid on it. Plus, I know the seller, who originally hails from Hobbs too.

Coincidentally, I also just received another item I recently purchased online: a second-hand copy of an illustrated version of Laura Hillenbrand's book about Seabiscuit. I only recently saw the movie "Seabiscuit", (yes, I'm a bit behind the crowd on this one) and wanted to read more about the story.

I sat down with my Seabiscuit book last night and noticed one of the illustrations included a postcard of the Agua Caliente racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, which figures in the story of Seabiscuit and his owners and trainers. The chip I bought would have been in play around the same time in the Agua Caliente Casino in Tijuana. Cool coincidence, huh?

Chip of the Day: El Rey Resort

Today's chip comes from the El Rey Resort in Searchlight, Nevada. The El Rey was located on Highway 95 and was open from 1946 to 1973. This chip was issued in the 1950's in the Christy & Jones shiny hat & cane mold. The El Rey, also known as the El Rey Club was run by a pimp named Willie Martello and burned down at one point in its existence. In the early days, it was known to offer prostitution in addition to gambling.

Cool Site of the Day: Vegas Today and Tomorrow

If you love Las Vegas like I do, you owe it to yourself to visit Vegas Today and Tomorrow. This website has more cool stuff related to Las Vegas than you can imagine. It's an excellent place to stay informed about future hotel and condominium projects as well as learn more about the history of Las Vegas and see maps, statistics and general information.

One of my favorite features is a map showing current and future projects, so you can see where they will be located in relation to what's already there. There's also a Who Owns What Map that illustrates which casino conglomerates own which properties. And a list of Las Vegas casinos by size. Did you know that Sam's town is the second-largest casino in town with 150,000 square feet? I sure didn't.

There are many more cool pages, especially the pages detailing hotel, condo and mixed use projects in various stages of completion and the original dreams for projects that turned out differently or were never built.

New Chips From Las Ramblas (in a few years)

I came across an advertisement in an in-flight magazine recently for another one of those condominium/hotel projects slated for Las Vegas, this one to be called Las Ramblas. Actor George Clooney is one of the "players" involved in this project, in the words of the official website. The project is set to be located two blocks east of the Strip on Harmon Avenue between the Hard Rock Hotel and the site of the planned W Hotel & Casino.

Lots of pricey projects are in various stages of development around Las Vegas. Let's hope they leave enough money in the budget for some quality chip designs.

Cool Site of the Day: oldpokerchips.com

One of my favorite places to look at and covet old poker chips is Rich Hanover's oldpokerchips.com website. Rich collects some of the rarest types of chips, including my favorite: plain-mold litho inlay chips. When you visit Rich's site, be sure to click on the links that show his collection of plain-mold litho inlay chips. Eye-candy galore.

My Virtual Personal Chip

Ever since this personal chip thing started, I've struggled with whether to have a chip of my own made. It's a pretty cool idea to use a chip like a business card, especially since that's what a lot of the early casino executives did. And having submitted a design for the last CCGTCC convention, I knew I could come up with a design.

And, even if I couldn't come up with a design on my own, I could always use Debby Meister, who has volunteered her skills to dozens of chippers wanting personal chips.

Still, the money kept holding me back. I'd much rather spend what it would cost to have personal chips made on actual casino chips to add to my collection than on having a personal chip made. And, the more the personal chip craze kept growing, the less and less I wanted to have one made.

The Chip Board, the online chip-collecting hangout, began to fill up with posts that weren't about collecting casino chips anymore, but instead all about personal chips. It seemed to me that collectors were spending so much time on trading personal chips with other collectors that I wondered if they were interested in casino chips anymore. I even whined about it in this blog.

I knew I was missing out on lots of fun from trading personal chips with other collectors, but the way I saw it that only added to the expense of having personal chips made. Not only do you have to pay to have the chips made, but then you've got the postage expense of mailing your chip to dozens of other collectors.

Still, my ego cried out for a personal chip of my own. What kind of chip collector was I if I didn't have my own unique individual chip? Eventually, the weight of my own obscurity was too much to bear.

I sat down at my computer and designed my own Virtual Casino Chip. At this point, I have no plans to actually pay to have this chip produced, but it's now my digital calling card when I post on The Chip Board. And, I no longer have to suffer from chip-envy when I see other folks posting pictures of their personal chips.

If you'd like to add my personal chip to your collection, just right-click and save a copy. That way, it will save us both postage.

Wine-ing for Another Vacation

I just got home from a great trip to San Diego barely a week ago, and I'm already dreaming of where I want to spend part of my vacation next year.

My wife and I drink red wine on a regular basis and have talked about visiting the Napa Valley of California before, but watching the movie Sideways yesterday re-kindled the idea for us. If you haven't seen it, the movie is built around the story of a visit to the Santa Barbara wine country that a couple of guys go on just prior to one of the guy's wedding. Throughout the movie, there is a lot of talk about wine and a lot of local scenery is shown, including actual wineries and restaurants in the area.

We're not true vinophiles who drink all the different types of wine and can rattle off a dozen descriptive terms when we taste a new wine. We like reds, particularly cabernet sauvignon, especially from the Napa Valley. We haven't ventured very far out of this comfort zone, although we've tasted whites and blushes enough to know they're not for us.

The Napa trip will give us a chance to visit some wineries and taste some wines that we haven't before. Our dining choices locally are very limited, which means the wines we can order by the glass are also few. The tasting rooms at the wineries we plan on visiting will allow us to taste some wines that we wouldn't ordinarily invest the price of an entire bottle on. And, along the way we'll get to learn a little more about wine, how it's made and what makes a good wine. Maybe we'll even taste some whites and blushes too.

Who knows, maybe we'll even learn how to describe what we're tasting?

Platinum Collection on eBay

Well, the auction for The Platinum Collection has begun on eBay and already has a single bidder who bid the minimum $1,000,000. It will be interesting to see if there are any other bidders and whether this bidder, who isn't listed as all bidders identities are hidden, will follow through with the transaction.

Chip Scavengers in Katrina's Wake

People who have scavenged chips in wake of Hurricane Katrina are beginning to attempt to sell their chips to the collecting community. I won't post any links to any of the activity since it might lead to them being successful. There's no way to determine whether they came by the chips by finding them on the beach or by picking through the debris on the grounds of the casinos. Of course, if it was by the latter method, then their loot is stolen property.

Not that these chips are good to anyone but collectors, since the casinos will not redeem them unless they know with all certainty that the person trying to cash them in was in fact a player prior to the hurricane. But, stolen property is stolen property, regardless of the value it would have if still in the hands of the victim of the theft.

I just hope the collecting community doesn't reward a thief by paying a premium for some of the higher denomination chips that are turning up.