Casino Chip of the Day

State: Nevada
City: Reno
Casino: Atlantis

Maybe I'm getting too wordy in my commentary on these chips, but I think if you can wade through this post you might pick up some interesting info you didn't know before. :-)

After spending the past few days in the land of Las Vegas casino chips, we now wander to the northwestern Mecca of Nevada gaming, and the lovely Atlantis casino in Reno.

I really haven't seen a very large portion of Nevada. Ever. I have a very good friend who has attended the Burning Man festivities several times, though that's not only too bizarre for my tastes but also just a little too much out in the wide open spaces for me.

From my visits to Las Vegas, I have collected chips from all (I think) of the operating (and some of the closed) table-games casinos in Clark County, or at least those that were open as of my last visit nine months ago, and I have all of the ones from Pahrump. However, I have not ventured to such destinations as West Wendover, Elko, Winnemucca, and Beatty, and I have serious doubts that I ever will make it to those places.

Nevertheless, last fall my wife and I finally made our first visit to the Reno/Sparks/Carson City/Lake Tahoe area, and I posted a few comments and a photo on this site. I planned to hit all of the casinos in the area to collect the chips, and I think I accomplished that. I had in mind adding a particular number of chips, since that would result in a nice total number of chips to arrange in an array for display under the glass on my desktop. (I think I posted a photo of that array after that trip.) Unfortunately, one of the casinos on my list had removed their table games, so I was going to be one chip short. I used that as my justification to drive on down to Minden and visit the casino there.

Atlantis was the second casino that I visited on that trip, shortly after driving away from the Reno airport. I hit the Peppermill and Atlantis before heading down to our hotel in State Line, NV, on the south end of Lake Tahoe. Later that week we drove back to visit the other casinos in Reno and Sparks.

My gambling results at Atlantis were a net negative $10 at craps, including what was likely about that amount of tokes during my play, so it wasn't a painful experience for my wallet. Certainly not when compared to some of the other establishments I visited on that trip.

This chip has a little something that lets me talk more about chips rather than just about the casino. You probably can't see this in the small image below, but click on that so that you can see my "medium" image of this chip. Look just above the "N" in Nevada.

There you will see a small, stylized "BJ". In this case, that does not stand for either a table game or a sex act. That "BJ" is the logo for the chip manufacturer and stands for the owner's name: Bernard "Bud" Jones. I have plagiarized and revised the following information about him from this article.

Bud Jones owned several companies that supplied the gaming industry with dice, chips, furniture, and other supplies. He was responsible for the design of several of the chips that he sold, but even though he manufactured the dice and other materials, for years he left the manufacturing of his chips to another company. Eventually, he started manufacturing chips, but he had limited success due to some negative marketing by his gorilla-in-the-room competitor, Paulson (which the article lists as "Paul-Son Gaming," though I had not seen that previously).

When Bud Jones died in 2001, his company was sold to B&G, which eventually was merged with competitor Paulson. The name was changed to Gaming Partners International, and the web site for that company lists lines of chips including B&G, Paulson, and Bud Jones. I don't see the BJ logo on any of the Bud Jones chip patterns on their site, so I don't know whether it is still in active use. Perhaps they continue to include it on designs used by long-term Bud Jones customers but don't offer it for new configurations. At least it was on the chips still being used by the Atlantis casino as of last fall.

Keep an eye out for the "BJ" logo on chips you encounter in your collection or in play and in the images I post. If you find one of those chips in a casino, you can point out the "BJ" to folks and tell them any explanation/story you like. Can't you see the possibilities in this? I will try to remember to point it out in future images I post, but this logo is not nearly so common as the top hat and cane mark, which is one of the iconic Paulson designs.





Edit 3/28/12: I have just received from rdw4potus the links to some images of his chips from casinos that I have already passed in this thread. Thanks, rdw! I am editing my posts to include his images, such as this one:

Quote: Johnzimbo

OK I tried this and when I hit "preview" I only see a link, not a picture. If I then hit "post" will it post a pic or just the link?

Link.

"Preview" is exactly that - the option to see a post, before actually posting it. It's much more useful that using "Edit" to fix mistakes. By using "Preview" you can see the mistakes and fix them before anyone else sees them.

In your case, you can see that you didn't get the picture right, giving you the opportunity to figure out what went wrong before posting it.

For what it's worth, below the box where you type the post, there is a link for Click here for formatting codes. Did you read thru that? Are you using the correct codes? I suspect that you are using LINK codes when you should be using IMG codes.

Quote: Johnzimbo

OK I tried this and when I hit "preview" I only see a link, not a picture. If I then hit "post" will it post a pic or just the link?

You should be able to see the image when you do a preview. To post a photo, you should be using the [img=http://.....] formatting code and not the [link=http://...] code.

If you continue to have difficulty, may I suggest that you make an exact copy of the lines where you have composed the reference to the image and send that to me by Private Message? I'll take a look at it and see whether I can make any suggestion, as I did for klimate10. I would like to help and would like to be able to see your images, but I don't think I want to distract this thread too far onto the topic of how to post photos.

Edit: Slow typing once again; the answer was already given.

[IMG]http://i1115.photobucket.com/albums/k552/Johnzimbo/th_005.jpg[/IMG]

OK! Fuzzy but I got it! TYTY Doc!

You can delete the "[IMG]http://i1115.photobucket.com/albums/k552/Johnzimbo/th_005.jpg[/IMG][/URL]" from your post. It is unnecessary and just adds the line below the image.

Close-up images are difficult to get in focus unless you have a close-up lens. I bought a set specifically to get photos of my chips.

Right. I saw that once I hastily posted the pic hehe. Now I can contribute some pics going forward. Thanks again!

Quote: Doc

Those are a bit like your Sands opening-day chips. I am confident that zippyboy's Aladdin Hotel dice are from the gift shop and never were used on a real casino table.

I thought the dice for sale at the gift shop were those no longer used at the tables.

Quote: Nareed

I thought the dice for sale at the gift shop were those no longer used at the tables.

Usually they are. But the Alladin dice in the photo are round edge. That's why I asked if they also have serial numbers. Only dice used in the casino would have numbers, but they are usually square edge.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Usually they are. But the Alladin dice in the photo are round edge. That's why I asked if they also have serial numbers. Only dice used in the casino would have numbers, but they are usually square edge.

These resemble the novelty dice found in many hotel gift shops. You can even get a set with your name if it is common enough.

There is also the remote possibility that these are Pai Gow dice (which have rounded edges and are smaller than Craps dice), but I would put long odds on that.

Quote: Doc

Keep an eye out for the "BJ" logo on chips you encounter in your collection or in play and in the images I post. If you find one of those chips in a casino, you can point out the "BJ" to folks and tell them any explanation/story you like. Can't you see the possibilities in this? I will try to remember to point it out in future images I post, but this logo is not nearly so common as the top hat and cane mark, which is one of the iconic Paulson designs.

Very interesting Doc. I note on the larger image that the quality of graphic seems of poorer quality than the others (the edges of the colors are not sharp, and the shell seems hand drawn). I wonder if this is a security measure rather than a manufacturing defect.

I don't recall seeing the radiating lines on other chips, but I also don't recall having any BJ products in my small collection. Is this design feature common for BJ chips?