Nevada Casino History

Beautiful Heber, Arizona and the Buckskin Lodge

2010-12-30T19:41:00.001-07:00

So here we are, halfway between Casino Arizona's Talking Stick Resort in 60 degree Scottsdale and Buffalo Thunder, outside Sante Fe in New Mexico.

All right, halfway may not be accurate. I can't remember. Talking Stick has 497 rooms, Buffalo Thunder has 395. Heber, Arizona along highway 260, 40 miles from Holbrook and 50 miles from Payson has no casino.

However, that's where we end up in the middle of 20-degree weather and a snowstorm to beat all snowstorms. It's just after Christmas and there are no rooms available at the inn! We are in the mountains, the highways are closed in all directions. I thought Arizona was hot.

Turns out this time of year the town of Heber has plenty of snow. What it doesn't have is plenty of hotel rooms. I can't see across the road with snow gusting at 45-MPH in my eyes. They are watering as I look desperately for a room for my wife and our two little girls.

I struggle back to the car and do what I always do when I'm in a spot like this, I ask my wife for help. She takes to the snow and at our last possible chance for a room she comes up empty. But wait, the Buckskin Lodge isn't just a motel, it's a home away from home. I know this because Tim and Cheryl Carlin at the Buckskin are so amazing they actually took us into their home - and here we are, waiting out the storm. So, no report from Buffalo Thunder or Talking Stick casinos. And no, it's not snow like at the end of the season at the Tahoe Mariner with a few little drifts of snow.

On the other hand, we are all having a great time eating popcorn and watching TV, scanning our emails using the wireless internet access that is available for all guests, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. When the roads open, we'll move on, but we won't meet any owners nicer than the Carlin's - Thank You so much for the hospitality.

My Other Blog Spot

2010-11-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

I've neglected the Nevada Casino History blog of late - but I do have another blog at About.com You can read my two -three blogs per week right here.

A few of the things I have recently bogged are:

The Big Six Wheel

Table Games Bonus Bets

Five Keys to Blackjack Success

Soon to come here - some new (old) photos from South Shore Lake Tahoe. See you soon.

2010 Chip Convention on the way to Las Vegas

2010-06-03T20:24:00.001-07:00

The 2010 edition of the CC&GTCC convention hits Las Vegas in just a few weeks. This year's event is being held at the South Point Casino. Conventioneers will begin arriving as early as the 18th, but the main event, the show in the Grand Ballroom, opens to the public on June 24th at 10:00AM

In the early 1980's, Bill Borland started a small newsletter to feature the casino chips he was selling. I followed suit in 1984 with the National Registry, and then continued with Casino and Gaming Chips Magazine in 1986. Archie Black added articles to my offerings and in 1987, he started the Casino Chips and Gaming Token Collectors Club.

Early collectors like Phil Jensen, Bruce Landau, myself, and Dale Seymour, we hitting flea markets, antique store and casinos alike to find old and interesting chips. Seymour followed his collecting bug and published the book Antique Gambling Chips.

Seymour’s book was followed by Howard and Kregg Herz’s work, A Collectors Guide to Nevada Gaming Checks and Chips. As the curator for Harvey’s Wagon Wheel at Lake Tahoe, Herz established the largest collection of individual casino chips in the world, and found a niche for his efforts in the book penned by he and his wife.

About the same time, Allan Myers, Ernest Wheelden, and Michael Knapp put out a price guide to the casino chips and checks of Nevada. Their work was titled The Chip Rack, and included hundreds of pages of chip varieties, casino starting dates, and a value code for known chips. The book is routinely updated to keep up with an ever-expanding line of casino chips and new finds.

Individual chips are made by a variety of chip manufacturers, but some of the older varieties from out of business suppliers are in great demand. Inlaid gambling chips (Crest and Seal-type) manufactured by the U.S. Playing Card Company are a favorite of collectors.

Robert Eisenstadt has devoted a lifetime to collecting and cataloging old chips, and his web site features photos of his collection. Inlaid chips sell from just a few dollars to thousands for rare chips from favorite old Las Vegas casinos clubs like the Dunes, the Flamingo, and the Great Provider.

Because the hobby has blossomed and new price guides like The Official US Casino Chip Price Guide (By James Campiglia and Steve Wells) have hit the market, collecting continues to be popular - and prices have risen to amazing levels.

According to Anthony Curtis, the man behind the Las Vegas Adviser, a record price for a $1 denomination chip was realized after retiree Sandy Marbs listed a single chip on eBay that she found at the bottom of her jewelry box.

The chip, a souvenir from a trip to Las Vegas in 1960, was a rare Showboat Vegas issue, one of only three known to exist. Marbs started the listing at $2.25 and watched in amazement as the bidding took off. When the dust settled and the emails to stop the auction early and make a deal ended, the auction ended with a final price of $28,988.88

I guess that $1 investment paid off pretty well.

I hope I see many of you at this year's convention, and don't forget, I'll be doing a little Power Point presentation with lots of pictures from my book: The Roots of Reno. The lecture starts at 9:00AM on Friday, June 25. See you there!

Harrah's 30-years ago

2010-05-26T21:12:00.002-07:00

Next door to Barney’s at Lake Tahoe was Harrah’s Sports Casino. I walked in and was surprised by how small it was. There were about a dozen chairs for a keno game, and several TV’s by the bar, and a craps game and half-a dozen blackjack tables. They had little yellow signs with $1 to $100 on them. Who the hell would bet $100 at blackjack? Come on, this place didn’t even have a poker room.

What it did have, in plenty, was cocktail waitresses, each in little black and white stripped shorts. They didn't look like any ref's I had ever seen before! Not that I noticed, I was looking for a poker game. When I looked some more, there still wasn’t a poker game, but the waitresses were still there. These apparently were a different species than at the Park Tahoe. These ladies all seemed to be about 5’2 with very short hair. They were in tennis shoes. I wasn’t interested in drinking and they weren't interested in me,so I left.

Across the driveway towards the state line, underneath a statue of a Pony Express rider, I found a set of carpeted stairs leading through a double set of glass doors into Harrah’s. The real casino, the big one. Really! Over 1000 slot machines, sixty table games, a high-rise hotel with rooms too expensive for me, and a poker room.

Well, not so much a room as a roped-off area at the end of a pit with six tables. Excellent. I was experienced now, things would go better for me. Plus, I got a stack of chips from the podium guy and they were really cool. Better than the Park Tahoe. These were hard plastic with little brass inserts and Harrah’s name in the middle. The $5 chips were red, with just four inserts, but the same middle part, like a little brass name plate.

I played two hands before I realized it wasn’t 7-stud, it was 6-card stud. Well, no problem, I thought. I’m a smart guy, I can play with one less card. Apparently, however, I may have been playing with one less brain cell than my opponents who were more than happy to rake my chips into their stacks.

At least I didn’t smash my leg into the stupid drop-box this time, but I felt just as much pain as I limped away from the table. I headed towards the back of the casino, past the hotel elevators and the front desk, toward the light. Head for the light, I thought.

This time I left with just one chip, and no, it wasn’t the $5. I hit the parking lot and looked around. There were a lot of cars. I could see way far away into the Park Tahoe’s parking lot, and somewhere in that lot was my car. A 1970 Mustang with a Boss 302 engine. I had just made my last $105 monthly payment on it. Now I had money for poker.

Well, no, not really, but I was hooked. I walked back to my car and started it up. The double glass-pack mufflers thumped away, but my gold Mustang wouldn't go toward Highway 50. It really wanted me to go back and play, so I spun a donut and drove the 200-yards back over to Harrah's and went back along my previous route to the poker room.

They were just putting up a poster that announced a low ball tournament: $11 buy-in. I could afford that.

I found a snack bar with $1.95 sandwiches and 50-cent sodas and became refreshed, just like the sign said I would. Then I wandered around until the tournament started, spending a total of $1 in nickles that drained through the polished-silver Pace slot machines with the Bar-Bar-Bar jackpots and bouncing yellow Genie's.

I was assigned a seat and they handed out some pretty old, obsolete Harrah's chips. Most had been drilled, but the one-dollar chips were still nice. When we hit the first break in the tournament I was still alive, and they said we were going to "race for the one dollar chips," but it was too late for mine. I had already pocketed my three remaining purple chips.

At the final table they colored-up our chips again and broke out some white $100 chips - no drill holes, but I never got a chance to get one to my pocket because we had to let everybody know how many we had and besides, I was afraid I might not win if I took a whole $100.

I didn't win anyway, but I did get paid, and they also gave me a couple tickets to see the show in the South Shore Room. I didn't have anybody to go with, so I gave them to the guy who came in third. I'm a nice guy. Who knew just one of those obsolete $100 chips would some day be worth more than the prize money I did win?

Park Tahoe 1978

2010-05-22T09:24:00.003-07:00

The Park Tahoe, 1978, what an awesome location for a casino. The Park was around for a couple years before becoming Caesar's Tahoe while the management found they had no ability to run the property profitably. I didn’t really care about the casino names or what they stood for. I was 19 and ready to play some poker.

I got in my car and drove, eventually passing Harrah’s on Highway 50 at the state line. When I drove on past Barney’s I saw that the Park Tahoe was the last casino in the area, so I pulled into the back of the casino and parked my car.

I had been playing poker on a regular basis with my high school buddies and at the Pacheco Inn down the street from where I was supposed to be spending my first year of college at DVC, but not today. Today I was at the lake. I was free, poker was not.

I came in the back of the casino and had to walk a long way past several shops before I got to the casino. It was huge. There were chandeliers and it was bright inside. The carpeting was red and brown, but the slot machines sported belly-glass with a brown and yellow logo of the Park Tahoe. Lots of bronze and chrome.

There was a long line of tellers that I learned was the main cage, and in front of that were several groups of tables with plush ropes around them. The pit. Not for me. I saw a sign that said “poker” and walked across the casino floor. There were several cocktail servers in mini-mini skirts. I may have stared. They all seemed to be the same: 25 years old with long hair and big, ah, smiles.

I looked at the bar and the servers and made a left where there was a small railing and headed up a ramp. When I got to a restaurant I figured I went the wrong way.

I headed back down the ramp and stopped by the bar. The cocktail servers were all still there. In fact, they had multiplied. They were everywhere, a whole gaggle of them. There may have been some slot machines around too.

I found the poker room. It took me several minutes. It was ten feet away. I milled-around, trying to figure out what was going on. At the Pacheco Inn, the tables were small oblongs and everybody sat on stools, up high. These tables were huge, with plush, deep-green felt. I didn’t recognize the games at first, nobody was playing lowball.

When I got up the courage I walked into the room and approached a guy behind a little podium. He said they had Hold’em and 7-stud. I didn’t know what the hell Hold’em was, so I said I wanted to play stud. There was a seat available. He said, “Take the seat next to the dealer on table three, over there,” so I did.

The first thing I did was sit in one of the very nice, high-backed chairs. They were on rollers, and I pulled myself under the table and smashed my knee into a very sharp metal box. What the hell was that doing under the table? I was in pain!

In Pacheco, the dealer took the “rake” out of each pot and put it in her tray. Sometimes dealers took a lot, sometimes they didn’t. I’m sure it was all fair and legal. At the Park Tahoe, they took up to $2 from a pot. Holy Crap! That seemed like a lot of money.

It was just a $1-3 stud game with a 10-cent ante, but that $2 going into the sharp, knee-damaging box under the table really bugged me. I thought of the poker games my buddies and I played for nickel-dime-quarter stakes with no rake and rarely anybody losing more than $5, but those days were fading away.

Now I was playing with the big-boy’s, or at least I thought I was. And the big-boys knocked me down, beat me, and took all my candy. Fast. Damn Bullies. I was going to keep one of the cool $5 chips because I had never seen a chip with a coin in the middle, but now I didn’t have any left. I just had two of the gray $1 chips with a gold hot-stamp in the middle and a rim with cards and dice mashed into it. So I left.

I had been sitting in my chair staring over the gold railing that circled the room and looking down a set of stairs to a little lobby and the street below – so I headed out that way and hit the street. Well, actually I hit an alley and then Barney’s casino. But I already knew from conversation at the poker table that I should be going to Harrah’s where the poker games were “real good.” So off I went.

This is part of a story from The Roots of Reno website. If you want to see more stories, click the title above or here. The second half of this story will be up on my blog in a couple days.

In the meantime, you might also want to see a story about the Overland Hotel in Reno here!

Poker in Reno

2010-05-21T17:30:00.003-07:00

So, what exactly is the scoop here, you might ask? I would have to say that I have sold out. I've been busy, working a regular job and ignoring my blog, and my articles, and my books, and blah, blah, blah. However, the link in the title takes you to my Reno Poker Examiner articles. If you want info on local tournaments and local Reno poker room stuff, there you go.

Now if you want to know about Lake Tahoe, well, I've got nothing for you but this photo of me jumping out of the 62-degree water and back into the boat near Emerald Bay. Apparently this is also the reaction many gamblers have had, as more and more (or less and less) casinos around the lake are getting by on less income. Table games are dwindling, and some properties like the Cal-Neva are all done! Makes me so sad.

I'll be at North Shore this summer - email if you want, perhaps we can run into each other somewhere. In the meantime, new posts will be coming your way quite often now that I have my life arranged a bit better and everything is awesome!

Enjoy the Snow at the Ta-Neva-Ho

2009-05-05T22:14:00.007-07:00

I just love this photo of the Ta-Neva-Ho. Taken in the late 1930's, it shows what Lake Tahoe is like every winter - snowy!@

No kidding, right? Well, not everybody has a chance to see the amazing lake that straddles the California and Nevada state lines. This club, built and opened in 1937, stands along the North Shore of Lake Tahoe - a couple of football-fields away from the water. From the back steps or the parking lot, you can still see the clear blue expanse of the lake through the huge pine trees. They stand much as they did seventy years ago - think taller.

The Ta-Neva-Ho was more than just a casino. As you can see in the photo, the club was housed in a building (don't say strip-mall!!!) that offered dining, gaming, bowling, sports betting, and even a drug store and post office. If you take a look at the building today (it remains as the Crystal Bay Club), it may seem too small to have offered so much. However, in a small community like the Crystal Bay, the locals were thrilled to have anything to do during the winter.

There were less than 1000 people in the general vicinity, and a drug store and post office were mighty handy to have nearby.

The Ta-Neva-Ho was originally built by Norman Biltz and Pete Bennett. No, the name is not Native American, nor does it stand for "white man gambling." Biltz was also involved in the Cal-Neva casino, closer to the lake. Over the years the Ta-Neva-Ho had several owners including our old friend Nick Abelman. He held points in the casino, and it seems many other people did too - right up until the present.

Today's Nevada Gaming Control Board insists on knowing (and approving) every owner, but back when the clubs were fun - dangerous - exciting - new, each spring season brought at least a few new "partners" to each venture at the lake.

One of those "partners" who showed up was Frank Fat, a Sacramento restaurant owner. When he first arrived at Lake Tahoe his friend Otis Babcock booked a cabin for him at Bijou, but the day after he arrived, Fat was asked to leave. That day it sucked to be Asian.

A few years later, Fat turned the tables on the situation when he and his friends, Babcock, Art Nyberg and Nick Abelman bought the entire block the Ta-Neva-Ho sat on for $125,000. Each owned 25%, and Fat took the gaming license, even though he ran only the restaurant.

In classic early Nevada style, Frank Fat fronted for a host of owner-operators who preferred to keep their gaming interests silent. The casino ran beautifully for several years and the partners sold their property in 1945 for $300,000 to a group of investors lead by Johnny Rayburn. Fat again stayed on to run the restaurants.

These stories and many more at found in the book "Nevada's Golden Age of Gambling," written by yours truly, AL W. Moe available from those crazy online bookstores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It is also available at Angelfire Press - where it gets shipped for FREE!

Stateline Country Club

2009-04-16T10:52:00.003-07:00

In chip collecting
In my humble opinion
In the state of Nevada
In my collection
Indian headdress
Incredible

The Stateline Country Club was situated on the California/Nevada state border on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe.

Originally owned by Cal Custer, the club had a reputation for fun during the short summer season at the Lake before winter snow storms closed the only link (highway 50) from the Placerville area of California and the Nevada side that lead to Carson City.

Nick Abelman purchased the small casino with his partners, Bert Riddick and Steve Pavlovich in 1933. This chip is from their early days at the club, although it may not have been on table until 1935.

Abelman's casino inside the Riverside Hotel - called the Riverside Buffet, also used crest and seal chips. His "Ship and Bottle" casino used even more elaborate chips on their fancy tables.

2009-01-17T11:07:00.003-07:00

A few of you may vaguely remember this item - a 1985 issue of Bill Borland's World Wide Casino Exchange Newsletter. Bill started a company he called Star Time, Inc. from his offices in Las Vegas and began purchasing casino dice, chips, and other memorabilia in the late 1970's.

He and his best girl, Starr Warrick, put out a semi-regular flyer with new chips they had come across, and they weren't dealing in a handful of chips, no, they bought tens of thousands of chips, often getting all denominations from closed casinos at just a nickle each.

As their buiness grew, Bill took to selling racks of chips (such as a rack of $5 coin-inlay's from the Rendezvous Casino in Vegas for $79). At the time, I was dealing in small lots, purchasing most of my chips from ads in local newspapers around Reno and Sparks.

When I was offered a lot of about 2500 chips from Zimba's in Reno, I figured I would have enough traders to last a lifetime. So, I called Bill and asked about making a deal to trade for some of his least popular chips, figuring I would off about a thousand and be set.

However, Bill's way of doing business was to drive the kind of bargain where he was getting three or even four chips for every chip he was trading. Eventually I sold about 2000 of the chips to a friend in Florida for his home poker games. To my knowledge, in over 20 years they haven't surfaced as a "new" find of collectibles. Some day, they will.

As for Bill's "Newsletter," he periodically send out others, but I don't recall a real time-table, although it was listed as a "bimonthly." Phil Jensen was the Contributing Editor, and may have provided the stories, such as the one about Harolds Club in the edition above.

What say you, Phil, was there any time table? Earlier issues had photos of Harrah's in Reno, and from Las Vegas were covers with the Gold Strike Inn, Diamond Jim's Nevada Club, and the Flamingo.

Whether Bill Borland was timely or not, he provided a fun little newsletter that featured his gaming items, and stimulated growth in the chip collecting hobby, and like other chip collectors and writers such as Jim Gillette, really helped promote the fun of casino history.

I suppose a simple "Thanks" is due.

AL

The State Line Country Club

2008-12-12T11:18:00.002-07:00

How is everybody this week? I haven't really been gone for a week, in blog-world, my posts follow each other, so I've always been here.

The State Line Country Club is one of my favorite stories. Part of the reason is because long ago I made friends with Karl Berge, a bar tender and part-owner of the club in the 1950's, and partly because Lake Tahoe is so freaking beautiful and I wish I had seen the lake back then.

A dice-dealer friend of mine at the Cal-Neva in Reno brought me a few old chips from the club, and the $100 variety with an inlay showing the club's swimming pool is my favorite chip in the world. This friend's wife remembers being three or four years old and wandering around the offices with her father, who was also a manager/owner. Lots of great stories - I wish I could tell them all to you, but of course, you have to start at the beginning.

When Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, Cal Custer, a long-time rum-runner from Southern California, purchased the club and expanded the operation in include a 21 table, tub-style craps game, and a dozen slot machines. The following summer, Cal expanded again, and by 1933, Nick Abelman of Reno and his partners Steve Pavlovich and Bert Riddick were very interested in the sixteen-acre property.

The partners talked Custer down from his $100,000 asking price to $84,000 and purchased the club and property. Abelman, always a stickler for providing a superior product, immediately spent forty-thousand dollars building an expansion that offered a large, hard-wood dance floor and a huge fireplace. In the back of the club under a row of chandeliers was a small stage where a band played every night.

The club offered dozens of slot machines, roulette, chuck-a-luck, faro, and 21. It prospered for years under the watchful eye of Steve Pavlovich, who managed the club most summers. Big-name entertainment was standard, and the club offered wonderful meals such as a crab cocktail, soup and a main course like "famous Louisiana frog legs," Idaho Trout," or a filet mignon, plus vegetables, potatoes, and a nice dessert for $2.50.

In the mid 1940's, as Nick Abelman approached the age of seventy, he admitted it was becoming tougher and tougher to make the trek from Reno to Tahoe every day, and his manager, Pavlovich was too sick to handle the club alone. The three partners conferred and agreed it was time to sell.

At a meeting at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Abelman came to terms with Nick and Eddie Sahati to purchase the club. A final price of $350,000 was agreed to, and the Sahati brothers took over for the 1945 summer season.

They got off to a rocky start, but eventually the club prospered under their management. Entertainers such as Lena Horn, Sons of the Pioneers, and the Ink Spots brought gamblers into the club, and times were good.

Eddie Sahati died of Cancer in 1952 at the age of forty-one. His brother, Nick, then leased the operation to a group of businessmen including Karl Berge, who ran the bar (Berge later owned Karl's Silver Club in Sparks).

Bill Harrah purchased George's Gateway Club, across Highway "50" from the Country Club, and after a successful couple of years was able to persuade the businessmen to give up their lease so Nick Sahati could sell the property and auto-court to Bill.

In 1958, Nick Sahati did just that, for the same $350,000 he purchased it for. Eventually, Harrah also purchased the tiny "Main Entrance" casino and also Bud Beecher's Nevada Club, allowing him to expand all the way to the actual state line. Harrah's Tahoe now sits on the site.

2008-12-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

The Tahoe Mariner sits forlornly in this photo to your right. Situated on a small rise above the highway, the casino property went through a long progression of owners and name changes before Valley Bank of Nevada finally foreclosed on the casino in 1983.

Capy Ricks purchased the property in 1946 from Ed Malley's real estate office in 1946. Malley had been at the lake for years, having sold his first property in 1922. His largest buyer was George Whittel, a multimillionaire who eventually owned tens of thousands of acres at the lake, including nearly 27-miles of shore front.

Capy Ricks was a more modest man, and built a friendly little club on the lot above Highway 28 at Crystal Bay and called it Capy Rix's. Finished in 1947, the property was rustic compared to to beautiful Biltmore being completed next door. Wooden steps led from the dirt parking lot up to a wooden porch that spanned the length of the building.

A red and white awning along the path to the front door, along with umbrellas, gave the club a friendly, beach-resort look. Inside, a restaurant and gaming including roulette, craps, chuck-a-luck, and 21 were offered. A total of eleven slot machines were available for players, including Mills Jewel Bells and Buckly Criss Cross Bells.

In late 1948, Jimmy Hume and five partners purchased the club. Eventually, Hume bought out Jerry Cooper, Bucky Harris, Walter Melrose, and George Zouganilas. Harold Murphy (Hume's step father) stayed on as the operations manager, and J. C. Jordan signed up to be the casino manager and a fifteen-percent owner. They ran the casino as the North Shore Club, and in 1969 the group purchased a small motel next door called the Vern Villa.

When the snow flew fiercely and the club closed for the winter, Hume would head for the Orient, or go on safaris. Jordan went to other gaming area's and especially liked London. Murphy passed away in 1970, and the club was sold to 26-year-old George Raymond Smith, son of Raymond I. "Pappy" Smith - patriarch of the Harold's Club in Reno. Harold's had just been sold to Howard Hughes, and George was anxious to make his own way in the gaming industry.

Jordon moved down to Reno and was a manager at Harold's Club for seven years. George, after selling the North Shore Club, was a long-time manager at the Cal-Neva in Reno.

Chester Conrad and Al Banford purchased the North Shore club from George in 1974. They immediately remodeled, and nineteen more motel rooms were added. As a summer-season only casino, the property ran profitably, if not overly successfully.

In 1979, Ray Plunkett purchased the casino and announced plans for to expand. Plunkett had been at the lake for years, and ran the first snowplow at Crystal Bay. He charged $6.50 an hour, and helped the few clubs that stayed open during the winter survive the season. He spent the summer months working for Johnny Rayburn at the Buckhorn Inn and Restaurant, and then at the Ta-Neva-Ho, where he ran the "Bucket of Blood" bar.

Plunket began building at the North Shore club by pouring a foundation for new hotel rooms, but financial problems and a fight with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency stopped construction. It Tahoe Mariner then sat vacant until 1983 when the property was foreclosed on.

After twenty-years as a ghost casino, the property was finally torn down in 2000.

2008-10-30T09:21:00.004-07:00

You might recognize figures like these - amazing old-west wood-carvings with slot machines from the 1950's. Not that you are that old, but hey, they've been around since then. You can still see them in some vintage settings like Virginia City, NV (near Reno).

In the late 1940's, Frank Polk began carving the first of 92 wooden western figures to fit slot machines, and they were sold to casinos in Northern Nevada, as well as other places.

Originally produced for Harry Skelly's Character Manufacturing Company of Reno, the sculptures held both post-war Pace machines as well as the preferred Mills High-Tops. Skelly's also produced twenty-one plastic cocktail waitresses, each holding a Pace BELL, for the Golden Casino in Reno. Those machines graced the lobby of the Golden Bank Club when it was still owned by Bill Graham and Jim McKay.

In 1979, Master wood carver Mannie Sanchez (Trinidad, Colorado) produced 15 old-west figures (shown in the photo above) using the same care and precision that went into Frank P0lk's carvings. These newer figures were fitted with re-manufactured Mills High-Tops, and have been in private hands ever since.

Mannie is an amazing artist, and now dreams of teaching others to do the kind of work he has spent a lifetime doing. A few years back, it appeared we would be working together at a new equestrian center in Raton, New Mexico.

Unfortunately, the deal for the center fell-through, but Mannie continues to do wonderful work. The circus wagon he made for the town of Raton (same link as above) is just beautiful. One of his students, Rose Cozzettte, of Canon City, CO, has a number of examples of her work on the web, and her work reflects his deep belief in high craftsmanship.

Anybody own one of Mannie's slot figures, or one of the original Frank Polk's? Thanks for reading - Al W. Moe.

The Roots of Reno

2008-10-17T11:12:00.006-07:00

The Roots of Reno

Yup - it's a new book. Your chance to get the straight scoop on how Reno managed to grow from a tiny little town below Lake Tahoe into the infamous "Biggest Little City in the World."

Of course, this little ditty is written by yours truly, and I'm sorry to say it's not perfect. For instance:

It's not hardcover - but that saves about $10 on the price of the book.

It's not endorsed by the University of Nevada Reno - they were only interested in publishing my books if their editorial board could chop-out anything they found to be unsavory about the characters, unflattering true facts, stories that contradicted long-held beliefs and confused those beliefs by introducing FBI records or court transcripts etc., but that did allow me the leeway to use actual records, newspaper reports and the account of witnesses who lived in the area in the 1930's and worked in the casino industry.

It's not going to be on every bookstore shelf - although you can order it at nearly 25,000 bookstores in the US - or online through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, or Angel Fire Press, and many others.

It has only 30 photos - not the 100 I wanted (the publisher straightened me out).

It has just a 13-page index of names and places - not the 20 I wanted (my wife straightened me out)

On the plus side, it's fun reading, informative, well-researched and documented without unnecessary footnotes and still manages to tell the story of how Reno grew into what a 1920's East Coast magazine called "Sodom and Gomorrah," a town of ill-repute and easy morals that featured women, whiskey and gambling - all during prohibition and before legalized open-gaming.

If you want to read a bit more about this book, click on upper title or the book itself. Thanks for reading - Al W. Moe.

Not one-of-a-kind, but rare

2008-10-13T17:48:00.005-07:00

So, you have some one-of-a-kind chips? So do I; well, not exactly, well, no, I don't. However, I do have a few that have just a few cousins kicking around in drawers and collections.

One of them is the chip on the left. This is an oversized variety 42 mm and has "SPEED POKER ALL-IN" on the rim.

This colorful chip is from the Poker Dome televised championship series circa 2006. I know this, because it is the last chip I had left when I busted out of the game.

Mansion Poker put together this championship, by allowing players from all over the world to compete in online tournaments. I started with a $5 buy-in tournament and finished in the top ten, which got me an entry into the $100 buy-in tournament. In that tournament, only the winner got a seat at the Poker Dome.

The best part of the tournament structure was that Mansion gave the entry to the Poker Dome as a freebie, and players got to keep their tournament winnings. I pocketed about $3500 and the entry, and while my flight (with my wife) wasn't from across the ocean, we still enjoyed the free airfare to Las Vegas.

Mansion had a limo available for use, and we were put up for a few days in a suite at Caesar's Palace. They were also nice enough to pay for our meals, and to top it off, they gave me $500 in casino chips to play with. Good people.

The Poker Dome was built upstairs at a theater complex on Fremont Street, and the day of the tournament I arrived several hours before the filming was to start so all the contestants could learn the rules, get fitted for blood- pressure meters, and do some practice. We had a great time, and they supplied lunch, snacks and drinks. Well, non-alcoholic drinks.

When it got close to time for filming, the Speed Poker crew got us ready, and that included makeup. I don't know how you ladies put that stuff on every day. That was tough, but not as tough as the lights...........jeez those things were bright. I thought I would have permanent damage, I could just see myself on a street corner with my little cup of chips, err, pencils.

As for the tournament, each of the six contestants started with 50,000 in chips, and play continued until one player had all 300,000. I used my special ALL-IN chip to signify a hand I thought would win (A-9) - it did not.

My wife and I sat in the audience and watched the last couple players battle it out, and Zack Williamson eventually won. Then we got limo'ed back to Caesar's for a very nice meal in Nero's restaurant. Since it was only about 9PM, my wife suggested we play a little poker, so off to the poker room we went.

There was a tournament starting at 11PM, and although I was tired, I love my wife, and she wanted to play, so ................we both entered. She got bumped out about 1AM, and I was still alive with chips at 5AM when we got down to the final table, and who do you think was on this table?

That's right, Zack, with his $25,000 check from the dome and another trip in a month to fight towards a million dollar first prize. At 6AM, Zack and the remaining three of us agreed to split the prize money in the Caesar's tournament four ways, and although Zack had about half the chips, we split evenly - he's a gentleman.

As luck would have it, my wife also played on Mansion, and she came in second-place two weeks later in a tournament and qualified as an alternate, so we headed back to Vegas. Although she didn't get to play in the Poker Dome, we did get all the perks. What a great time we had.

There is no more Poker Dome, no more speed poker, and no more Mansion for me, since they no longer allow US citizens to play. I do have this cool chip though, and even if it isn't one-of-a-kind, I still like it.

There are more posts to come, I'm not ALL-IN. What have you got?
Thanks for reading - AL W. Moe.

2008-10-13T15:31:00.008-07:00

As you know, I've been known to hang around casinos - around, and around, and around. Well, the other day a security officer was bringing a fill of chips to the "21" table I was standing next to and a woman asked about "that plastic thingy, that, you know, holder thing, was called."

I explained that the officer brought the chips in racks, and the racks went in the holder so casino personnel could see the chips, but the officer couldn't get to them, except when he got to the table and took the lid off the birdcage.

The woman then laughed at my name for the "thingy," because that was such a silly name. The officer, as my day was going, refused to acknowledge the chip holder was sometimes called a birdcage. So, there I was, looked on with what can only be described now as scorn and mistrust (like when I talk to my banker).

Anyway, my use of the vernacular birdcage was accurate, and as somebody who has spent more than enough time in casinos, let me say that a casino certainly has its own language.

For instance, when you throw a player out, you 86'em, much like a restaurant's kitchen will say 86' the pork chops because they are old or smell like shoe leather, which most pork chops do. And, since we are on the subject, most people thrown out of casinos are drunk - and smell worse than shoe leather.

At any rate, another gaming item called a birdcage is the chuck-a-luck dice holder. Now chuck-a-luck used to be quite popular, but when's the last time you saw this game in action? The game was easy, and a good dealer would tell you that the dice-cage (or birdcage) held three dice, and you could bet on any single number of 1,2,3,4,5 or 6, and get even money. If the dice came up 1, 2 and 3, the dealer paid those, and took the bets from 4, 5 and 6. No house edge, right?

Well, hotels are built on profits, but chuck-a-luck has gone the way of the do-do bird because the house edge was way too high. You see, when the dice came us with a pair or trips, the house only had to pay one bet - all the other numbers lost. For what it's worth, of the 216 dice combinations, you can make a set six times and a pair 90 times, so the house used to win 108 times out of 216 (average) spins of the cage........yikes.

As for the birdcage, there was a club in downtown Las Vegas at the corner of First and Fremont that had a ten-foot high birdcage with three-foot red dice inside it, which was fitting, since the club was called the Bird Cage.

Yup, that's the photo above. However, I didn't come to talk about the Bird Cage - I wanted to talk about a fancy souvenir from the club that was only open at 100 East Fremont from 1958 to 1959, and that's their $5 chip.

The chip was made by a great old guy named Richard Taylor. Mr. Taylor's brother and his partner, Leo, started a little chip and dice company in 1939 and called it T-K Specialty. They made a few sales, but Leo decided the conditions weren't for him, so he split the gig, and Richard joined his brother and eventually became a partner.

Richard remembers selling dice at their Kansas City offices and delivering them to fancy illegal clubs down south like the Forest Club in Texas. "We drove up to the club's gate and gave our names to the guards, who called up to the mansion to check on us. Eventually they let us in."

"It was the nicest place I had ever seen, and I had my first prime New York steak there, and it was all free, you couldn't pay for a thing. They had a few roulette tables, and some 21 and slots. Those old slots may have been screwed down pretty tight, but they needed good dice for the craps games, and that's what we brought them, some 300 pair."

T-K Specialty made chips with a TK TK TK around the rim, and then about 1948, they came up with the horeshoe rim. And, finally, that's the rim found on the chip I have from the Bird Cage. So, the rim-style started about 60-years ago - about the time I started this story (right?).

Anyway, a bird cage holds something beautiful that you want to see, but you don't want just flying off - the same with that plastic chip carrier at the casino, and the same with the bird cage used for chuck-a-luck.

Did I mention that T-K Specialty made mostly dice? You see......

Thanks for reading - Al W. Moe.

Old Friends

2008-09-30T15:30:00.005-07:00

I've been cleaning out the closets - opening boxes and sifting through a lot of old papers. Having collected casino items for thirty years now, you can imagine that I've met a lot of people in the hobby. Some of them I met at collector shows, like the one that the chip collectors club CC&GTC puts on. Others through my ads in Coin World and Numismatic News in the early 1980's.

I was living in Sparks, NV and trading with a few local fellows when I got a letter from a guy in New York. We traded a couple chips, and then we exchanged phone numbers. Amazingly, the next week this dude with a heavy New York accent told me that he was going to be in town. Well, it seemed a bit strange, but I gave him my address and sure enough he showed up.

The night he arrived, there was a loud knock on the door, and I was greeted by a tall fellow with a bit of a crazed look on his face (yeah, kind of your typical chip collector). He was very friendly, but I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. We talked, and I showed him a few racks of trader chips and he picked out a big handful (we had no price guides, no idea about scarcity or worth - we just collected, and it was great).

Now my new friend, Bruce Landau, kept talking while looking at the chips he wanted, and then he fished into his briefcase and came out with two stacks to match the one stack he had picked, and said, alright - lets trade your stack for my two stacks. Done deal.

He was generous, funny, and even more of a chip fanatic than I was. Bruce worked for Bogen photo (Vice President of Sales & Marketing) and had a show going in Las Vegas, but he flew the 450 miles to Sparks & Reno to see me (and I imagine Howdy Herz and a few others). He made me feel special, and not so silly for collecting chips.

We saw each other at chip shows, and he dropped by my house on a regular basis for twenty years - a good friend. I found some pictures and his business card and a couple letters with some items I saved to trade him while I was cleaning. We never got to make the last trade because he passed away a few years back.

A lot of the joy of collecting went with him, and I miss the big guy. When he visited, he liked to tease my daughter and tell her he knew me before she was born. She now has a daughter of her own.

I haven't been to a chip show for a couple years. Guess I need to get out more.

I've been doing more writing, and reading. In fact, I just finished Clapton: The Autobiography, and I have to say that I enjoyed it - but this guy was stoned and drunk for half his playing career. Jeez, I though Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic!

Clapton was a bit of a loner and solitary child, and attended the Kingston College of Art until he was tossed for not finishing his work at the age of 16. He worked for his grandfather as a gofer on building sites, and taught himself to play the guitar. By the time he was 21, he had been in five bands, including the Yardbirds, the Bluesbreakers, and then Cream. He was also considered a bit of a legend already due to his influence with local enthusiasts who had never heard a mix of sounds like Clapton played - Jazz, blues and rock and roll. There was no Internet, no youtube, or eBay to bring new sounds instantly to new locations.

As it turned out, Clapton was an amazing player, and his early work certainly spiked the interest of many listeners. By the time he was playing as Derek and the Dominos, he was having trouble staying sober and staying motivated to play any type of "pop" music. The only studio album by the group was Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. It was released in 1970 and went nowhere.

When Layla was released two years later as a single, known then as a Clapton work - it sold briskly and had a lot of air play. Why this is important, I don't know.

I just enjoyed reading the book -

On the down side, the final 100 pages of the book could have been called "my life went on, I was in and out of rehab, and I slept with every woman I found attractive/available, and did I mentioin that I was drunk all the time."

Yes, it gets a bit dull near the end. But still, worth the read.

What have you folks been reading?

Thanks for reading - Al W. Moe.

Early poker games

2008-09-23T20:24:00.007-07:00

I saved my first casino chip in 1978. Although I wasn’t old enough to legally play poker at the Pacheco Inn (now the California Grand) , I managed to get away with a few hours of Lowball to start my playing career. I lost.

I didn’t go home completely empty-handed, however, because from the $20 in chips that I started with, I still had three $1 chips as I drove home. I was disappointed, since I had a job that paid just $2.50 an hour at the time, and a $20 crunch was more than a day’s pay after taxes. On the other hand, I convinced myself that I had gone through a great learning experience, and decided to keep the chips forever, as a kind of tribute to my first poker game against what I thought were really tough players.

After four or five years playing against my high school buddies, who could blame me for being optimistic? In fact, in the very first game I ever played for money, I was ahead almost $5 before by some strange turn of events I started losing hand after hand. By the end of the night my buddy, Barry Wilson, was losing $10. I was stuck $9.20 and had to give a marker to one of the big winners.

It was problematic that the player I had given the marker to was a senior, while I was just a freshman, but the real irony was that I had a crush on his 15-year old sister, Denise. When I scrapped up the money, I walked over to their home and rang the doorbell, hoping Steve would answer.

Did he? Of course not. Denise opened the door, looked excited to see me, and then asked why I was there. When I explained that I had to see her brother, she gave me a strange look, called him, and then passed quick judgment on me after watching me pay him off.

Denise said anybody that would play poker for money was stupid. Strangely enough I later had a couple wives that thought the same thing. Neither was Denise, since she completely dismissed me after the payoff debacle. I was heartbroken, but got over it when I started beating the games I was playing in on a regular basis. ‘Twas not the case for my buddy, Barry.

Barry had to take a job at Village Inn Pizza to pay his poker loses at the tender age of 14. Plus, I lost the time we had spent together swimming, riding our bikes, and watching him crash his bike, which was a regular occurrence. I eventually took to calling him Wipeout Wilson. Cooking pizzas was probably a safer experience for him.

I rather enjoyed beating the seniors each week, but eventually they stopped inviting me. My first barring. A number of casinos in Nevada would later add me to the list of 21 players they barred, but fortunately they don’t exclude you for being a good poker player, and I’ve been able to supplement my income with poker winnings for the past thirty years.

As for those poker chips, they were brown with a covered wagon on the inlay. The mold was a Hat & Cane, used by Christy & Jones, and there was a $1 symbol on them - but no name. When I made it up to Lake Tahoe in 1978 at the age of 19, the first club I got a chip from was the Park Tahoe (owned by the Park Cattle Company).

I saved a couple $1 chips from the Park Tahoe which were gray with a gold hot stamp in the middle with the "Park Tahoe - $1 - Stateline Nevada." I was too cheap to save one of the Red $5 chips with the coin inlay, but the rim of the $1 chips had four sets of dice and four sets of cards around it - made by the Nevada Dice company. If you want to learn more about chips styles, mold designs, terms and definitions etc., you might consider picking up a copy of Nevada Gaming Checks & Chips by Howard W. Herz and Kregg L. Herz.

Believe it or not, I still have one of each of those two early examples of now old (obsolete) casinos. That early trip also netted my a few chips from Harrah's, Harvey's, and the Sahara Tahoe. Every one of those chips is now worth some money ($5-$20 each), and whenever I saved chips, I saved more than one - and traded them with other collectors. It has been a lot of fun.

Chip prices are available by scanning eBay, or picking up a copy of a price book like The Official U.S. Casino Chip Price Guide by James Campiglia and Steve Wells. The book has a lot of information and plenty of photos - well worth the cost.

What are your first collecting experiences?

Thanks for reading - Al W. Moe.

Collecting Casino Chips

2008-09-19T10:06:00.001-07:00

What is it exactly that makes people collect casino chips? Is it the round shape? After all, who hasn't taken a coin of some type and flipped it - heads, tails, heads, tails............that's got to be a universal urge. But chips, I'm not sure.

The fact that you can hold a chip in your hand helps, and it represents money MONEY. Better yet, it represents the quest for more money, more chips - easy money. That one little chip can be transformed into a lot more. Hell, "Tree Top" Jack Straus turned the phrase "a chip and a chair" into reality when he won the 1982 World Series of Poker Championship after being nearly busted early in the tournament.

Straus was down to just one $500 chip before doubling up several times and eventually winning the largest paying single sporting event in history (at the time), some $520,000. That chip must have been magical! And that's how I feel about all the chips I collect.

Every chip I have is special for some reason. Some, only because I like the look of the chip, or because I traded it with somebody special (I have a few ugly chips I like because Bruce Landau or Doug Saito and I haggled over them at some point). Others are from casinos where I played a little poker or blackjack, even winning sometime.

However, the main reason I love casino chips is because they represent the casino itself: the history of the casino and the people who built gaming. When I hold a chip from the Calneva at North Short Lake Tahoe circa 1930, I know who was in the club and running things at the time.

I know Bill Graham or Jim McKay probably authorized that chip, and I know their own history. I know movie stars like Clara Bow played in the club at the time - and could have even touched that very chip. How can that connection not be intoxicating enough to make me wonder - hmmm, what if?

Don't collect chips? Well, there is still time for you to turn your life around. Maybe you already collect old dice, postcards, ashtrays or some other casino memorabilia - and you probably get the same excitement as I do with the chips. Or maybe you don't - there is something so special, so right about chips. Perhaps you should give it a try.

Go ahead, I dare you.

Thanks for reading - AL W. Moe.

In the Beginning.....

2008-09-15T14:37:00.001-07:00

In the Beginning, I was a nine-year-old kid playing a Superior Jackpot Bell slot machine in the basement of my great grandparents house in Oakland, California. I used to visit for a while with my grandmother and my parents, then head outside to play - but the old, dirt-floor basement under the back of the house always pulled me from other thoughts.

There in the back, by some rolled-up rugs was a heavy, dusty-rusty one-armed bandit, and nothing kept me happier than opening the back and taking the dimes out and playing them through the machine, over and over.

As any young kid can tell you, there was an enormous temptation to take a few of those dimes with me when I left to buy candy or (sound of harps) baseball cards. I was a San Francisco Giants fan, and Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry - holy cow, they were all there, just a few minutes away at Candlestick Park - and a dime bought two packs of cards that offered a chance (slim, mind you) of getting one of their gum cards. So much temptation. But no, no, I wouldn't do it; not even for baseball cards.

I never took a dime, because that slot machine was the best thing in the world. It was sacred, even if nobody in the family remembered it was down there in the basement. And for a long time, all I wanted was a slot machine of my own.

The best I could manage for my own room at home was a 45-cent machine from a strange little store with lots of trinkets from Japan and around the Orient. My math skills were still developing, but my curiosity pushed me to count each stop on the wheels (20 total) and the Bar-Bar-Bar jackpot symbols only came up one time. In addition, a cherry and two cherries only came up once each, and there my friends, was the beginning of my understanding of the magical properties of gambling.

I let my friends play my little slot machine, for a penny a pull, and I paid them 10-cents for a jackpot, two-cents for a cherry, and three-cents for two cherries. They were happily playing a 75% payback machine, and the next week I bought two more machines (all in pennies to the cashier's dismay) and had my own casino.

A few days later my mother came into my bedroom casino and busted me. I was shut down -
out of business, but richer for the experience. I learned to figure some percentages with those little slot machines.

I also learned to calculate a baseball player's batting average (just divide their hits by at-bats) and a pitcher's ERA (earned run average) from the back of those old baseball cards. So, those early cards and slot machines taught me math, and sent me on a path that included playing poker with buddies through high school and college, playing sports through the same time frame, and finally spending my adulthood in casinos - on both sides of the tables.

The casinos have been a good gig for me, and the history of Nevada and how the early casinos were legalized and grew from their original spots in basements (like that old 1928 Caille slot) and second floors to become the lifeblood of Nevada's 20th Century economic base has been a lifelong learning for me.

How many of you have similar interests? How did you get into collecting casino memorabilia, learning about casino history, or into the casino industry? Don't be shy -

Thanks for reading - AL W. Moe.

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