Proper first world problems here. Too much time away for the holidays or at work but also having bulletproof high speed internet during that time leads to coming back to the office with a pile of padded envelopes with the spoils of
eBay wins and buys waiting.
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The problem with being a singles collector is those fun singles start to add up. Several new Vegas ones, some older ones as well. A couple of anniversary chips in the bottom row as well (the Hollywood Park $5 on the bottom right was the first chip that had be properly confused all the way back to my earliest days on ChipTalk. I couldn't quite figure out what alchemy was happening here. It was only a couple years later that I found out it was an 8AV spot on a yellow base with an oversized inlay. Maybe one of the first 10 chips that turned me into a chipper..). The Desert Inn over-label has been an oddity I've had my eye on for a while and I was finally able to find one that wasn't abusively overpriced. Had to add to the YOT Dragon collection... as a dragon in the year of the dragon had to happen (there weren't many this cycle, which makes this particular dragon rather sad). The "poker" poker-chip struck me as funny at the time, and I couldn't pass it up.
But wait! There's more!
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An un-used (or murdered)
CIC center from a chip from the Castaways in Vegas. There's no evidence of the rest of the chip on the surface or the gap along the edge that would have held it into the base of the chip it was (would have been?) in so maybe extracted from a chip but maybe never made it into one and "grew legs" out of the factory.
The winner from this cycle:
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A quite uncommon $5 chip from early in the history of the El Rancho Vegas. The foil in the hot-stamp is long gone, but the embossed detail is still quite clear in this one. I had long confused this with the edition just after this one and
assumed I had most of my early El Rancho collection settled. It was only after this appeared and a deeper dive into the history told me this was a piece that was missing.
It looks like only 500 were made (the older price guide from Campiglia and Wells has this listed as "unique"!) and I figured I should pounce while I could. It's not my favorite El Rancho chip in my collection*, but easily the rarest of the group.
Only a couple stragglers still in the mail and those are non-chip related items. Just enough time to take a breath and maybe work on the "last chance"
CPC set I don't really need.
Enjoy!