It began with a Facebook listing for seven Tropicana $100 hot stamps in South Dakota.
I sent a message inquiring about the chips and asked if the seller had more. To my excitement, they had a total of 42 chips and provided a photo of all the chips. Hurray, I'll take them all!
Frequent readers of the Mail Showcase thread will know what happened next. Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to see that same photo posted by none other than @Mushmanchuman. WTF?! Not to be outdone, @Timmah had also contacted the seller, been told the same thing about 42 total chips, been shown the same photo, and had sent payment. Surely we were getting scammed.
Wasting no time, I began by hurling all kinds of abuse and threats at the seller; demanding a full refund. The seller was surprisingly approachable about the whole ordeal, offering to discuss the matter over the phone and assuring us that he had sent chips to all of us and provided shipping confirmation. He claimed to have had about 150 chips total that were split between the three interested parties. He explained that the chips belonged to his son's elderly neighbor who was moving into an assisted living facility and had asked them to throw everything away in a storage unit. The seller believed there may be more chips there along with loads of sports memorabilia they were attempting to sell on behalf of the elderly neighbor.
Following this news, and the incomplete information we had received earlier, Pat, Tim, and I all agreed to speak to the seller together and to arrange a purchase of the chips in one deal to ensure we were not being told three separate stories. Things did not go as smoothly as I had hoped: it turned out that @Timmah and @Mushmanchuman had a history and did not get along. After a little back and forth, reason prevailed as I begged them to put aside their old grudges long enough to finish this one deal.
Soon after initiating contact with our new plan, we received the following image:
I immediately thought about when @navels found the Tropicana $5s and $25s back in 2018. Just like those, these were wrapped in US Mint burlap sacks. We had found the long missing Tropicana $100s!
Obviously, we told the seller we would take the lot. @Mushmanchuman began to make plans to drive out to SD to get the chips when the seller informed us that he wasn't in SD, he was in St. Paul where his son now lives -- a mere 90 minutes from me -- I was in the car immediately.
Just over an hour later I was pulling out of the Trader Joe's parking lot with some precious cargo in my front seat.
Upon getting home I got a chance to make the official count:
1056 chips on hand with another 150 or so in the mail. All total, we would end up with 12 racks and be able to provide a final ending to the Tropicana hot stamp search.
But you're probably wondering...how did an old man in St. Paul get the chips in the first place? The "story" as it is, isn't much: allegedly, the man was playing cards in Bloomington, MN when a woman walked in and asked him, "Are you so-and-so." He replied he was, and she said she was told to "give these to you." She dropped the US Mint bags at his feet and left. He had never seen her before and never saw her again. We may never know how the chips got out of the casino, why they were all in US Mint bags, or how they made their way halfway across the country.
I sent a message inquiring about the chips and asked if the seller had more. To my excitement, they had a total of 42 chips and provided a photo of all the chips. Hurray, I'll take them all!
Frequent readers of the Mail Showcase thread will know what happened next. Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to see that same photo posted by none other than @Mushmanchuman. WTF?! Not to be outdone, @Timmah had also contacted the seller, been told the same thing about 42 total chips, been shown the same photo, and had sent payment. Surely we were getting scammed.
Wasting no time, I began by hurling all kinds of abuse and threats at the seller; demanding a full refund. The seller was surprisingly approachable about the whole ordeal, offering to discuss the matter over the phone and assuring us that he had sent chips to all of us and provided shipping confirmation. He claimed to have had about 150 chips total that were split between the three interested parties. He explained that the chips belonged to his son's elderly neighbor who was moving into an assisted living facility and had asked them to throw everything away in a storage unit. The seller believed there may be more chips there along with loads of sports memorabilia they were attempting to sell on behalf of the elderly neighbor.
Following this news, and the incomplete information we had received earlier, Pat, Tim, and I all agreed to speak to the seller together and to arrange a purchase of the chips in one deal to ensure we were not being told three separate stories. Things did not go as smoothly as I had hoped: it turned out that @Timmah and @Mushmanchuman had a history and did not get along. After a little back and forth, reason prevailed as I begged them to put aside their old grudges long enough to finish this one deal.
Soon after initiating contact with our new plan, we received the following image:
I immediately thought about when @navels found the Tropicana $5s and $25s back in 2018. Just like those, these were wrapped in US Mint burlap sacks. We had found the long missing Tropicana $100s!
Obviously, we told the seller we would take the lot. @Mushmanchuman began to make plans to drive out to SD to get the chips when the seller informed us that he wasn't in SD, he was in St. Paul where his son now lives -- a mere 90 minutes from me -- I was in the car immediately.
Just over an hour later I was pulling out of the Trader Joe's parking lot with some precious cargo in my front seat.
Upon getting home I got a chance to make the official count:
1056 chips on hand with another 150 or so in the mail. All total, we would end up with 12 racks and be able to provide a final ending to the Tropicana hot stamp search.
But you're probably wondering...how did an old man in St. Paul get the chips in the first place? The "story" as it is, isn't much: allegedly, the man was playing cards in Bloomington, MN when a woman walked in and asked him, "Are you so-and-so." He replied he was, and she said she was told to "give these to you." She dropped the US Mint bags at his feet and left. He had never seen her before and never saw her again. We may never know how the chips got out of the casino, why they were all in US Mint bags, or how they made their way halfway across the country.
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