Casino Chip of the Day

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Quote: Ibeatyouraces

The only chip I have from a casino no longer in operation is a $5 chip from the Northern Belle Riverboat that was used as an overflow from Casino Windsor just after the temporary casino opened. The NB was closed and moved when the permanent casino opened. 2 things I'd like to know, the value of the chip which I believe is around face value and the other is whatever happened to the Northern Belle. I have searched and found no info on where it went.

Also, I am not a collector so if anyone is interested in the chip for their collection, PM me.

Sorry my chip guide is only for U.S. casinos, So it has nothing that might help :(

deleted

I have stated in a couple of places, maybe in this thread and another, that I am hopeful (though not confident) that the new chips for "The D" casino, formerly Fitzgerald's, will be in play in time for WoVCon][. I have just seen the March issue of the NGCB Chip and Token Report, which shows seven new chips having been approved for The D during the month of March. There had been none previously.

These seven chip designs include:

Quote: March 2012 Chip and Token Report

ROULETT I 400 OF EACH COLOR DAISY,HOT PINK,DAY BLUE,HAWAII FLOWER,SHOWBOAT GREY,RUSSETT
ROULETTE II 400 OF EACH COLOR FUSCHIA,BLAZE ORANGE PETUNIA,OCEAN BLUE,TAN, WHITE
48MM NO CASH VALUE NUMERAL 25 PROMO CHIP
48MM NO CASH VALUE NUMERAL 100 PROMO CHIP
48MM NO CASH VALUE NUMERAL 500 PROMO CHIP
NO CASH VALUE NUMERAL 5 MATCH PLAY 1,000 EACH COLOR-BLZ ORNG,SHRBT GRN,BLRPL,GRY,FUSCHIA
NO CASH VALUE NUMERAL 25 MATCH PLAY 1,000 OF EACH COLOR-ARC YELLOW,BTTRSCTCH,SLMN.MAUVE,AQUA

What's this? Not a single chip approved with a denomination on it? Doesn't sound too good for having chips available as souvenirs on my next trip. At least it appears as if they will be willing to offer someone some promo and match play chips.

doc,
i think you said somewhere that you prefer to only collect chips of casinos you have visited.
i am not sure if you mean that you only collect chips that you have actually procured in person.
if it is the former, perhaps you could visit the casino while you are out there,
and then have someone mail you the chip when it is released.
or would this violate your collection protocol?

When I used "MM" back when I created reports for the SEC, that meant millions. Are they ordering 3 sets of 48 million promotional chips?

Quote: Nareed

I had the notion that with a largely Hawaiian cleintele, and restaurants serving Hawaiian food, they'd ahve some half-decent Kona (which at half*decent it would be pretty good still).

Let me disabuse you of that notion. CaliMont Station serves dishwater coffee. You can get a decent cup at the Dunkin' Donuts at Fremont for $2.00+tax. Lappert's Ice Cream in the Cal has very good ice cream from Hawaii, and Masaladas (deep fried dough balls). Their coffee? Terrible. I guess Hawaiians are used to inferior coffee, or they export all their good beans.

Interesting, the other Boyd properties in town have coffee makers, but not the ones downtown.

Oh, and to keep this thread on topic: Doc, you may want to ask NicksGamingStuff about D chips. You do know, he deals there, right? (I think this is public information by now).

I also use MM for millions (thousand thousands), as that's what was instructed in my highschool. If that's what the chip report means, that's a LOT of chips!

48 mm = 1.889 inches

GPI, for one, offers four sizes:
39mm
43mm
48mm
50mm

ok, so mm is millimeters in this case. Are Roulette I and Roulette II also size instructions?

there are usually solid color chips and chips that have striping on the side.
sometimes the latter will have cash value printed on them as well.
it is mainly for use when someone buys chips at a high denomination
and makes it easier for the dealer to watch high value inside bets.

there is an excellent resource for chip collectors at the museum of gaming history...

CHIP GUIDE, MUSEUM OF GAMING HISTORY

Quote: WongBo

48 mm = 1.889 inches

GPI, for one, offers four sizes:
39mm
43mm
48mm
50mm

stoopit caps lock!

Quote: teddys

Let me disabuse you of that notion. CaliMont Station serves dishwater coffee.

So it's still better than instant decaf, right? ;)

Quote:

You can get a decent cup at the Dunkin' Donuts at Fremont for $2.00+tax.

I've tried DD coffee. Decent just about covers it. But it's a much better than the half-burnt swill they serve at Starbucks.

Quote: WongBo

i am not sure if you mean that you only collect chips that you have actually procured in person.

That's what I mean. If I survive, I am sure I'll be back to The D again in the future to get a chip. I just would prefer to get it in May if they have them then.

Quote: teddys

Doc, you may want to ask NicksGamingStuff about D chips. You do know, he deals there, right? (I think this is public information by now).

I once asked directly whether that was the place, but I didn't get a direct answer. Maybe it's a case of, "I can't say it right out loud." There was an offer from NicksGamingStuff to get and hold a chip for me, but I at least have the patience to wait until a visit when they have the new chips in play. Las Vegas is not nearly like the other places that I go to just to get a chip – I just add new Vegas chips to the collection next time I am in town.

Quote: WongBo

48 mm = 1.889 inches

What WongBo said. The 39 mm ones are the size I usually encounter. I assume these promo chips are larger so that they don't get mixed in with the chips in the trays/stacks.

State: Nevada
City: Las Vegas
Casino: Casuarina

Lots of uncertainty (on my part) today regarding names, ownership, and the like.

The Casuarina, also known as the Westin Casuarina because of its being a member of that upscale division of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, is off-strip to the east by a long block on Flamingo Road. It is a stone's throw from the back end of Bally's, provided you have a fairly good throwing arm. All of the outdoor signage says "Westin" much more prominently than "Casuarina." Their web site just calls the hotel "Westin Las Vegas" and only applies the name Casuarina to the casino.

The CasinoCity.com directory does not mention the casino under any name at all, so far as I can find, and I don't really understand that. Since my chip says Casuarina and this site has a dedicated forum with that name, I'm sticking with it.

The casino has operated as the Casuarina since 2003, having been closed for some time after previously being known as the Maxim. In 1996, while in a car in front of the Maxim, rapper Tupac Shakur encountered a fatal volley of gunfire. Except according to those who claim he is still alive.

It would be good to have the kind of input that pacomartin often provides, because I am not even clear on who owns the casino. The NGCB list of non-restricted licenses says it belongs to Wimar Tahoe Corporation under control of William J. Yung. This is the same Yung family that, through their Columbia Sussex venture, had such extreme troubles with the Tropicana Atlantic City. Wikipedia, in discussing that fiasco, says that the Westin Casuarina was not involved in the Columbia Sussex bankruptcy but that in 2010 it forfeited on its mortgage and there was a foreclosure. Lots of details I don't know about, I suppose. I don't even know whether Columbia Sussex is really the same company as Wimar Tahoe Corporation. Anyone have some useful input here?

I have long been curious about the choice of the Casuarina name. Apparently it is/was also the name of a resort in the Cayman Islands that was owned by the same folks who applied this name to their property in Las Vegas. I didn't even know what "casuarina" meant until I checked a dictionary:

Quote: My Mac's built-in dictionary widget

casuarina
noun
a tree with slender, jointed, drooping twigs that resemble horsetails and bear tiny scalelike leaves. It is native to Australia and Southeast Asia, and is a valuable source of timber and firewood. • Genus Casuarina, family Casuarinaceae.
ORIGIN from modern Latin casuarius ‘cassowary’ (from the resemblance of the branches to the bird's feathers).

I suppose an Australian/Asian plant provides a suitable name for a Las Vegas casino/hotel where you can receive treatments in their Hibiscus Spa. It just isn't a name I would anticipate. It sounds more like something meant to confuse people.

The Casuarina casino has always impressed me as a quiet, almost relaxing place, in contrast to most other casinos in Las Vegas. They even have a three-hour happy hour Monday through Thursday with very low table limits, without seeming to attract a bunch of lowlifes. The billboard visible in Google Maps Street View says "25¢ Roulette" and "$3 Craps", all this in a very nice facility right there close to the strip. Not a bad way to spend your 5-8 P.M. time slot.

The Casuarina chip shown below does not mention "Westin" at all. I guess fair is fair if the hotel and the casino inside it don't want to recognize each other. It is a blue chip with pink and gray edge inserts and a Reversed Hat and Cane design from Paulson.

If anyone has Maxim chips, I think this would be a fine place to post images. I don't have one in my collection. Post other Casuarina chips, too, of course.

Quote: rdw4potus

ok, so mm is millimeters in this case. Are Roulette I and Roulette II also size instructions?

Probably not... just to indicate two totally separate color schemes either for separate tables or a backup set. When someone "loses" a roulette chip at coloring-up time, the croupier must stack all those chips and make certain the set is complete. Although it has no cash value at the cage they don't want someone hoarding chips when they are worth ten dollars and then sneaking them back onto the table when worth one hundred dollars.

I think this is a small order for an opening party or something. Either D chips will come later or they will keep using Fitzgerald chips for awhile.

Quote: FleaStiff

I think this is a small order for an opening party or something.

I thought it was interesting that for the designs with multiple colors, they specified the quantity for each color, but for the others they didn't identify a quantity at all. I don't understand the sometimes-yes-sometimes-no character of listing quantities in the Chip and Token Report.

I really like playing at the Casuarina. It's quaint without being dumpy. Small, but (kind of) classy.

And, Doc, casinocity lists it as "the westin..."

Ah the Casuarina my old stomping ground. It was called the Maxim back then. I'll bet you didn't know that the Griffin Detective Agency had an office there.

Quote: rdw4potus

And, Doc, casinocity lists it as "the westin..."

Well that's clever(?) The Westin Casuarina is alphabetized -- not under "W", not under "C", but under "T".

I know that I have some difficulty in justifying how I alphabetize some of the casino names, but I don't think I have ever seen much of anything alphabetized according to a leading "The".

Thanks for clearing that up, rdw4potus.

Quote: 1BB

I'll bet you didn't know that the Griffin Detective Agency had an office there.

You are correct; I did not know that. Are you talking about back when the casino was the Maxim or some kind of office Griffin occupied since going through the bankruptcy?

Quote: Doc

You are correct; I did not know that. Are you talking about back when the casino was the Maxim or some kind of office Griffin occupied since going through the bankruptcy?

This was at the Maxim during its heyday in the 80s. We played blackjack right under their noses with almost no heat. This was not the only casino to provide office space for Griffin back then.

Quote: 1BB

This was at the Maxim during its heyday in the 80s. We played blackjack right under their noses with almost no heat. This was not the only casino to provide office space for Griffin back then.

Card counters often tell stories of the Maxim having the best blackjack game in Las Vegas at any point in time past or present.

That it did teddys!

Quote: Doc

... but I don't think I have ever seen much of anything alphabetized according to a leading "The".

I may have mentioned it a couple dozen pages back...

There is a New Wave 80's group called, "The The".

---

The Wiz' Hotel page lists the Casuarina. Any time I did a Google or Wikipedia search, it redirected to the Westin, which is what I used on the maps that I made.

I guess I would alphabetize the 80s group by the trailing "The" instead of the leading one. ;-)

In spite of my rambling comments about the Casuarina name in the initial post, my guess now is that the hotel is properly called the Westin Las Vegas while the casino inside is the Casuarina. It seems quite possible, especially considering the issue of a mortgage foreclosure, that the hotel and the casino don't belong to the same people. All of that sort of information seemed a bit obscured when I tried to find it on the web. I probably just don't know the right way to find such stuff.

Quote: Doc

The Casuarina chip shown below does not mention "Westin" at all.

That's a really nice looking chip. I think I may take up collecting chips I like...

BTW two kind of related oddities:

1) I keep seeing the name as "Causarina"
2) In 2010 I waked from the Atomic Testing Museum to the Strip, making a stop at Terrible's, and for the life of me I can't recall even seeing the Westin/Casuarina.

Nareed:

(1) I have no explanation for that misspelling. Have you perhaps been teaching people how to type? ;-)

(2) You were probably walking to the strip on the south side of Flamingo and just didn't notice the hotel across the street. It is between Koval and Audrie, and on the south side of Flamingo there is just a big parking lot.

Quote: Doc

(1) I have no explanation for that misspelling. Have you perhaps been teaching people how to type? ;-)

1)I haven't even been teaching anyone English, though many have asked me to.
2) My spelling usually has all the requisite letters, just not in the requisite order.
3) I meant when spelled right, I keep seeing it in my mind as "Causarina"
4) :)

Quote:

(2) You were probably walking to the strip on the south side of Flamingo and just didn't notice the hotel across the street. It is between Koval and Audrie, and on the south side of Flamingo there is just a big parking lot.

Maybe. I recall the famous Italian "hole in the wall restaurant," though. So it's possible I just wasn't paying attention.

State: Nevada
City: Las Vegas
Casino: Circus Circus

Jay Sarno and associates opened the Circus Circus casino in 1968 without a hotel. The main structure is shaped like a giant circus tent, and circus acts performed to entertain the family and perhaps to distract the gamblers. It looked pretty neat in the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever, but that aspect of the facility had been scaled back significantly the last time I looked for it. It seems that nowadays, in Las Vegas the word "circus" more often implies gymnasts from Canada and eastern Europe.

Circus Circus was not a big financial success for Sarno, and it faced the same challenges (federal accusations of ties to organized crime) that he was encountering at Caesars Palace. Sarno and his partners sold Circus Circus in 1974. Several hotel towers, low-rise hotel units, and an RV park were added – the only RV park on the strip. There is also The Adventuredome, a carnival-midway styled arcade area.

I was quite disappointed the one time I tried the buffet at Circus Circus, but I have heard that the steak house is really good. Never been there myself.

Circus Circus now belongs to MGM Resorts International, although MGM seems to try to hide that fact. A couple of years ago, the Slots-a-Fun casino right next door merged under the same license with the Circus Circus casino, but I plan to post the Slots-a-Fun chip separately when this thread gets to "S".

I cannot find a manufacturer's logo on the ceramic chip shown below, but an on-line resource indicates that this is again a Chipco chip with a satin finish and that it was issued in 1999. The two images are opposite faces of the same chip. The edge marking includes three pink bands that match the color on the faces. Between those edge bands are single vertical bars or tick marks that I suppose could be the numeral "1", though there is no accompanying "$". If any of you have a $5 Chipco ceramic chip from Circus Circus, perhaps you can tell us whether the edge says "5" or just has the same tick mark.

I'm going to take a brief moment to highjack "my own" thread to a different topic. I have something I want to post, but it doesn't warrant a whole new thread. I was inspired to post it because today is Easter, but I didn't want to add more controversy to the Happy Easter thread.

Five years ago on Easter Sunday, I was a bit low, and I made a cell phone video to share with a few friends. The cell phone I was using at the time was great for the things for which I regularly used it, but terrible for making videos. Both the audio track and the video resolution are abysmal, but my personal videography and narration are even worse. I decided to uploaded it to youtube this morning, in case any of you would like to have a look. It's just over a minute long, and yes, some of my smart aleck nature comes through.

My favorite Circus Circus chip:

That is a really terrifying looking clown.
Then again, you don't see many $100 chips at Circus Circus.
Nice video.

I have the same chip as Doc as well as this boring one

>They even have a three-hour happy hour with very low table limits, without seeming to attract a bunch of lowlifes.
>"25¢ Roulette" and "$3 Craps", very nice facility right there close to the strip. Not a bad way to spend your 5-8 P.M. time slot.

Quiet, sedate and yet a low-rollers paradise. Supposed to have had a very friendly and entertaining craps crew at one time too. One craps dealer elsewhere started going there with his craps and poker pals regularly after an out of town visitor dragged him there initially. Don't know what it like now though.

Quote: teddys

My favorite Circus Circus chip:

That is a really terrifying looking clown.
Then again, you don't see many $100 chips at Circus Circus.
Nice video.

That immediately made me think of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence:

Sister Flora Goodthyme

Circus Circus should be renamed Ashtray Ashtray!

oh admit it, you were ALREADY thinking about her!

And don't forget that when CC opened, not only did it not have a hotel, but they charged admission to get in. There were actual circus acts taking place around the casino, which distracted players from the real task of gambling, and in one famous story, a trapeze artist fell and plunged to the airbag below. The whoooosh of air released from the airbag knocked all the cards off adjacent BJ tables. They had an elephant picking the keno numbers. They had the biggest neon sign Yesco had ever built at the time. Circus Circus was always thought to be a low-rollers joint in a time when every other casino was actively soliciting whales, however, when CCE finally went public and they opened up the books, every other CEO was amazed at the profits CCE had been raking in from the volume, volume, volume. CCE went on a buying/building spree adding Luxor, Excal, half of Monte Carlo (along with Steve Wynn), Mandalay Bay, Edgewater and Colorado Belle in Laughlin, and three places in Reno, as well as the only RV park on the strip.

(photos to follow in a bit)

Quote: WongBo

oh admit it, you were ALREADY thinking about her!

I shall not despoil this thread any further with my yarns about Bingo with the Sisters :)

Quote: Doc

I'm going to take a brief moment to highjack "my own" thread to a different topic. I have something I want to post, but it doesn't warrant a whole new thread. I was inspired to post it because today is Easter, but I didn't want to add more controversy to the Happy Easter thread.

Five years ago on Easter Sunday, I was a bit low, and I made a cell phone video to share with a few friends. The cell phone I was using at the time was great for the things for which I regularly used it, but terrible for making videos. Both the audio track and the video resolution are abysmal, but my personal videography and narration are even worse. I decided to uploaded it to youtube this morning, in case any of you would like to have a look. It's just over a minute long, and yes, some of my smart aleck nature comes through.

Doc thanks for sharing that cool little video you did it was very nice.

Quote: FrGamble

Doc thanks for sharing that cool little video you did it was very nice.

Then I should take it that it's not offensive to make a pun about a Psalm?

Circus Circus used to have a special place in my heart. It was one of the first casinos I went into BEFORE I was 21 (many many years ago); the Adventuredome at one time, was a very underrated amusement park. They have a surprisingly thrilling roller coaster (though it seems tame on the surface), and some very high tech rides at its peak. My last trip there, I walked through, and I felt like a creeper among children. It's gone downhill a lot, as did the whole property.

My first trip after I was old enough to gamble I stayed at Circus Circus. At the time, Stardust and Sahara were still open, so it wasn't quite so remote. The rooms were cheap, and I had a decent room. Now the place is overrun by families who allow kids to be out whenever. I was very disturbed by the property.

Quote: teddys

That is a really terrifying looking clown.
Then again, you don't see many $100 chips at Circus Circus.

Ain't dat Phyllis Diller?

Quote: Johnzimbo

I have the same chip as Doc as well as this boring one

Yep, that's a single-color, hot-stamped, Long-Cane-Version Paulson chip, very much like the Carson Nugget chip I posted -- the one they seem to recommend on their site for 25¢ and 50¢ chips. Boring seems like a reasonable description. But thanks for posting it anyway. It's nice to see the variety of chips in everyone's collections.


(Sorry, I was a bit slow to see and respond to your chip.

Can I guess that tomorrow will be Circus Circus Reno? ;)

You are welcome to guess anything you like, even the Wynn, if you choose. But your guess seems to be more justifiable. Am I supposed to make advance announcements?

BTW, no one ever told me whether they had figured out the method I alluded to for guessing correctly (almost) every day. If you did, you could mention it in this thread, but it might be more fun not to make a public announcement of the method. PM me if you need confirmation.

I stayed at the RV park outside Circus Circus with my family when I was but a wee lad. My parents were not gamblers and my sisters and I were not old enough, but I do remember walking through the casino and marveling at an arcade full of video games they had there. I wished that my parents would slip me a twenty and let me loose in there, alas they were far to cheap for that.

We were there in the summer and the temperature was blistering, especially on the asphalt. I may be inflating the temperature in my memory, but I feel like it was still not much below 100 in the middle of the night. We weren't staying in an actual RV, but rather a tent trailer. While we were there, the showers were broken. One of my sisters was fixing her hair outside the tent trailer and a fellow RV park-er walked by and wondered aloud, "Oh, did they fix the showers?" My sister's hair had become so greasy that it looked like it was wet from out of the shower.

It's amazing I ever went back to Vegas as an adult after that experience, but I guess the trick is to not go in the summer, and not stay outside. We were on a 3 week camping trip around various places in the west; I'm not entirely sure why we stopped in Las Vegas, probably just to see the giant neon signs and other sights.

I agree about the heat. I think that Circus Circus even cranks it up a bit on their property. I have never been to Las Vegas in the middle of the summer -- June and September are the closest I have come. I almost skipped WoVCon last year because it was scheduled for June 15, but we survived.

My first visit to Las Vegas, I went to a comedy show at the Tropicana. One of the comic's lines was: "Some people try to make excuses for the heat here; they say, 'It is a dry heat.' Bull! The thermometer says 125 degrees -- you've got that setting on your oven!"

When my wife and I were still adventurous enough to walk the strip in the daytime on our few June/September trips, we did like all of the other tourists: we walked through every casino along the route, just to go through their air conditioning before stepping back out onto the sidewalk.

State: Nevada
City: Reno
Casino: Circus Circus

Yes, bigfoot66, you guessed correctly. And I received one PM that gave an effective way to guess my chips for the next couple of months, but there's another way to get a good indicator of the rest of my entire collection. But only for those folks who have been paying attention for a while.

Today's Casino Chip of the Day is from the Reno edition of Circus Circus. According to Wikipedia, the structure started out as a department store in 1957. Expansion plans to add a hotel and casino in 1977 were abandoned when an established casino operator offered to buy the place and convert it to a casino.

After Jay Sarno and friends sold the Las Vegas Circus Circus in 1974, the new owners were incorporated as either Circus Circus Enterprises or Circo Resorts – I can't really figure out the distinction. That company purchased the Reno department store structure and turned it into a copy of the Las Vegas casino and hotel. The new facility opened in 1978, in an era of considerable casino growth in Reno. In addition to the hotel rooms that were incorporated in the 1977-78 conversion, two more hotel towers were opened in the 1980s.

The same company continued to develop new properties in Las Vegas and eventually became known as the Mandalay Resort Group, which was purchased by MGM Mirage in 2004. Result: the Reno Circus Circus is now owned by MGM Resorts International. If you have the funds, they would probably sell it to you.

Circus Circus Reno is the northernmost unit of three large casino hotels that are connected by wide pedestrian bridges over the Reno streets. I think it is possible to enter the Eldorado on 3rd Street, pass through the Silver Legacy and Circus Circus, and exit the Circus Circus parking deck at 7th Street without ever stepping completely out doors. And perhaps without breathing any "fresh" air until reaching the parking deck.

On my only visit to the Reno Circus Circus, I lost a whopping $5 at craps, which was better than my result a few minutes earlier at the Silver Legacy but worse than the game before that at Eldorado. Circus Circus was the fifth of ten casinos that I visited that day to add chips to my collection. Yes, this whole collecting business is a bit of a compulsion. Didn't teddys say something back last Thursday about my being obsessive-compulsive?

Unlike the Circus Circus Las Vegas chip that I posted yesterday, the Reno chip has the same image on both sides. It is (according to one of the on-line references I have been using -- mogh.com) a Chipco ceramic chip (no manufacturer's logo I can see) with a satin finish (which I can verify). That resource says it was issued in 1997 but that the same design with a linen finish was issued in 1995. The edge printing on this chip does, indeed, say "$1", so without further input I will guess that the "tick mark" on the edge of yesterday's chip was a "1" that was just missing the "$".