Key West Trivia (1 Viewer)

dennis63

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The Key West Trivia Thread

Occasionally, I post statistics about Key West chips and members here who've bought Key Wests. These posts are usually in other threads. This year, I'd like to separate them in a thread so we can see, year to year, how things change. And so, here is some "Key West Trivia."

Key West chips were designed by a team assembled by Apache Poker chips in September, 2004. The chip was specifically designed to go on the H mold, which ASM placed back into production, after the mold was out of production for some 20 years. No one recalls exactly how many chips were made in the original run.

The original price:
The pre-sale price for Key West chips in 2004 was $0.89 each. After the pre-sale, prices jumped to $1.09 per chip.

The original chips:
The original run of Key Wests had nine denominations -- NCV, $0.25, $1, $5, $25, $100, $500, $1,000, and $5,000.

In July, 2011, I bought the design for Key Wests from Apache and made chips with JimB and ASM for group buys on the blue wall.

What's in the business name...
By 2012, purchases of chips and playing cards exceeded $10,000, and a company was formed in Delaware for tax purposes. We tried to form the business using the name, "Key West Resort & Casino," but the clerk in the business license office at Wilmington refused the application, or any that included the word "casino." My wife and I chose the name, "Continental Card & Game Co.," because our house sits on land once occupied by George Washington's Continental Army. (Its members were known to play cards in the camp.)

Chip trivia: (updated 12/03/21)
  • Since founding the company, we've sold 50,337 Key West Resort & Casino chips.
  • Their face value, if they were real, would be $30,000,000. (Thirty million dollars.) (Our inventory system keeps track.)
  • Those chips would form a single stack 560 feet high and weigh 1,000 pounds. (Again, thank you, Microsoft Excel)
  • Placed on the ground, edge to edge, the chips would stretch 1.2 miles
  • The most popular Key West chip is the $5 chip. We've sold 7,140 of them to date.
  • The second most popular Key West chip is the $1 chip. We've sold 5,842 of them.
  • The average size of a set of Key West chips, among all owners, is 300 chips.

Key West is a worldwide hit
  • We've sold chips to over 500 players in the United States and 25 other counties.
  • Key West chips and cards are on tables in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Mexico, the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Spain and Switzerland. (I'm also counting Afghanistan. See below.)
  • Officially, Key West owners worldwide speak 17 different languages. Apparently, they all speak poker.
Key West has lots of Americans, too
  • About 85 percent of Key West owners live in the United States. We've sold chips to players in 49 of the 50 states. I'm still not sure what's up with the people of Wyoming.
  • There is (still) just one set of Key West chips actually in Key West. There are eight other sets in Florida.
  • The state with the highest number of people who use Key West chips is California (44). The state with the largest single collection of Key West chips is Colorado, where one poker player stocks his card room with some 3,200 Key West chips, denominated and roulette
Getting samples:
We've sold lots of samples, too. To date, 243 people bought samples first -- sometimes more than one set -- and 57 of them also bought roulette samples. In all, we've sold 3,158 chips in sample sets of one size or another.

The casino never existed
There has never actually been a "Key West Resort & Casino," anywhere, in Las Vegas, Florida, or anywhere else. There was, briefly, a slot parlor called "Key West Casino" outside of Port Charlotte, Florida, but it is now closed. They had no table games, and Key West chips were never used (or any good) there.

GIs like Key West
There is one set of 300 Key West chips in Afghanistan (shipped to a U.S. soldier who left them there when he returned home), and one set aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier at sea. The U.S.S. Key West, a nuclear submarine, does not have a set of Key West chips aboard.

No live gaming (yet)
The business sells casino chips, playing cards and gaming accessories. We don't have a license to do any live gaming, and we don't. (Except for our blackjack promotions, where you get to play a hand of blackjack for $2 off your purchase).

The law is the law...
Everything we sell -- casino chips, roulette chips, and everything you can find in a casino -- is strictly illegal in my home state of Delaware, and can't be found anywhere outside one of the state's three licensed casinos. Owning or possessing any of the items is a crime. You're exempt if you have a state business license and are registered as a seller of gambling devices with the U.S. Department of Justice. (We have both.)

Looking to the future
The year 2019 was our most successful, and we're looking forward to a more eventful 2020 for Key West. I will be planning giveaways and contests each month this year.

Thank you to all who have joined in, and to all who've watched from the sidelines here on PCF, looking forward to the day when they can acquire their own set of Key West chips.
 
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