Welcome
@JConFire , oh boy... yourvery own Ben book right off the break! My journey collecting old Trump AC chips! "The golden years of AC... or so they say"
I think many of us started our "casino" playing journey in the Taj and Trop (for me circa 2003) we were playing in several home games at the time, but my pops loved running up to AC on a regular basis (we lived in Laurel, Md at the time) about 3:15 up if he was angry and shifting lanes like a crazy person! Lol
@FordPickup92 and I have collected many amazing chips in our short 3 year span in the hobby, but people always talk about "build what's important to YOU!" Well I grew up poor,parents never gave me much... (my father was ans is a compulsive gambler. Probably why we were so dang broke!) Anyways when heheardabout me starting to collect chips he called me up and said "I have something I want to give you!" It was a Taj $1, Taj $5, Marina Snapper, and two Harrington (Delaware casino) $5s.
I decided early on I would love to find a way to make a playable set of chips from the 3 Trump Properties mix it all together and just play it! What I didn't know was how much the journey would cost back then...pushing 5 digits now and almost 3 years of searching everywhere, this is what we have put together.
View attachment 967354
The Blues Top left are just Starburst I plan to mill and make Taj quarters. What started as a plan of a a barrel of each of the $1 chips turned into a rack.of each. Castle, Plaza (blurple), Plaza (red, stillnot complete but down to hunting 9), Marina, Taj,you can see what happened from there! Way more $1s than we would ever need!
I love the old clay snappers, but Don't use them for poker, no idea why I pay $20 - $25 for a $2.50 chip that I really don't need, can use them.as fracs, but either way... there they are!
In the early searches I picked up a barrel of Leaded Castle "Royal Flush" series off of E ay for face value ($100) from 1996, they released those chips one per week for 20 weeks, again leaded and to this day one of my absolute favorite feeling House Molds
View attachment 967365
Top rows shown here. I now have 160 of those and am paying closer to $15 per chip for them, would love two racks ut haven't found a single subset in about 18 months.
What I figured out and was fascinating to me are all the different "special,limited edition" inlays, from concerts, fights, advertising... ihave acollective personality, these are limited edition, some of them numbered! I was freaking hooked! My favorite is the St. Patrick's day chip above #Ed to 777! Not terrible for the Marina and Plaza chips,many of those are $10 - $18 each, a few are much much more depending what is on them. Marilyn Monroe from the Plaza for example is about $50.
But my babies are my limited edition Taj $5s, some are $15, some are $50 and all in between.
View attachment 967368
View attachment 967369
No ryhme or reason, I just buy what I can afford.
So now... what the hell would this mess look like on a poker table... I am trying to someday get to a playable quantity of each $5 so they don't have to mix... but this was the original intent a couple years ago
View attachment 967372
View attachment 967374
I just recently finished my first barrel.of $25s and have 2 original Hundos.... wehave yet to felt this mess but getting closer now! One of those long term collections that's not really important to get felted, when it is fully playable, absolutely I plan to felt it, but we have many other sets that we play om the regular.you will find many folks have long term "slow builder sets" they don't talk about them... they don't want people competing for their chips, but ai am happy to share my Journey so far!
Best of luck and if I can ever be of assistance please feel free to reach out!
Fellow Chipper Ben
