Al Moe
Casino chip collectors will mob Las Vegas in June for a show featuring chips and other items. A single casino chip sold on eBay for $28,988.88
The 2010 edition of the CCGTCC chip collector’s convention hits Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 and runs through Saturday June 26. The convention is the highly anticipated annual get-together for thousands of casino and gaming memorabilia collectors. Doors open to the public on Thursday, June 24, at 10:00AM in the Grand Ballroom at the South Point Hotel/Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club (CCGTCC) has been around nearly 25-years, after starting with less than 20 members in 1987. Archie Black, a collector of casino chips from Atlantic City, New Jersey, started the club after contributing articles on New Jersey chips to Casino and Gaming Chips Magazine, based in Reno, Nevada.
Black and his small band of collectors held their first annual meeting at the American Numismatic Association Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1988. The club’s enthusiasm and growing membership led to it becoming a sub-section of the ANA, and the annual meeting became a full-blown convention in May of 1993, held at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. This year’s event will be held at the South Point Casino, and traffic entering the Grand Ballroom is expected to top 10,000 persons.
Quarterly Chip Club Magazine
The CCGTCC offers an 80-page color magazine with its annual membership. The quarterly magazine features stories about the history of casinos, but because members collect all types of memorabilia from around the world, stories contain wonderful photos of chips, dice, ashtrays and matchbooks, tokens, casinos themselves and even hotel key- cards, postcards and swizzle sticks.
Early collectors of casino and poker chips like Phil Jensen, Bruce Landau, and Dale Seymour scoured flea markets, antique stores, and casinos themselves to find rare chips in the 1970’s. Seymour went on to publish the first catalogue and price guide: “Antique Gambling Chips.”
Chip Price Guides
Newer price guides like the “Chip Rack” and “The Official U.S. Casino Chip Price Guide” are updated regularly to reflect fluctuations in prices, new issues, and rare finds.
$1 Chip Sets Record Price
Retiree Sandy Marbs from Florissant, Missouri listed a chip on eBay that she found nestled at the bottom of her jewelry box, a momento from a trip to Las Vegas in 1960. She started the bidding at $2.25 – but by the end of the auction, the rare $1 issue from the Showboat Vegas fetched a record $28,988.88
This year’s convention at the South Point Casino will include more than 50-dealer tables full of all types of casino collectibles for sale and trade to the general public. Educational seminars are a part of the convention this year with advice for organizing your collection, collecting gaming, collecting Caribbean casino chips, and a lecture on the book, “The Roots of Reno.”
Club members also enjoy special events like a blackjack and poker tournament, trade sessions, plus club rates in the hotel. Non-members will enjoy a veritable plethora of casino chips, dice, tokens, silver strikes, and displays of different casino advertising collectibles like matches and ashtrays. Bring your old chips to sell or have priced. Who knows what they might be worth? The dealers at the convention do!
Posted by mrchipper at June 9, 2010 07:37 PM