Travis, yes it was an infringment on the KY Derby trade mark. The Tropicana also did the same. We never heard from the Derby people. They missed it. Bud Jones was very concerned after they realized what they had done. It never happened again without a release being signed.

The Derby chip was the 4th LE we released. It was in the early days of LE's and we were in the learning process. We had a nightmare with our 1st LE, NY's 95 (1,000) and our 2nd one Super "Bowl XXXIX" (1,000) (also a trade mark infringment). We had never heard of the club and managed to p*ss off all colectors. Our 3rd LE, St Patricks Day (1,100) was released more to the likeing of the collectors.

We desided since the collectors wanted LE's we would make 4,000 Derbys. FQ's employees were going crazy over our LE's. The casino mgr desided to hold Derby chips for employees. About 1,000 were held for them. The cage mgr released the employees chips by mistake about a week early. It just so happened that the Aladdin convention started the day of the mistaken release of the Derby chip. Our employees went there and sold the chips to dealers for hugh profits as the dealers did not know there were more waiting for release. We looked pretty bad on that one. When we released the other 3,000, the WSOP was on. Poker players were trying to corner the market in LE's at that time. They bought racks of the Derby chip. All 4,000 chips disappeared very quickly. I doubt if any release of 4,000 chips ever went away before or since. The chip sold in the $40 range for a long time. The poker players finally realized they were not going to make a killing and many chips came into the market. I know one poker player still holding about 400 of them.

I took over the release policy after this one and we managed to make most collectors happy for the next 97 releases through Oct 96. Except for the Archie Moore chip release. Yes, we released 101 chips in 18 months. It was a lot of chips but in comparison the Fiesta has released 101 chips in 6 years. 98 since Oct 1996 when I started there. I feel we brought many new collectors into the hobby. It has been fun, I will miss it next year.

Rick Howe (casino mgr), John Liner (Bud Jones Salesman), and I, were the unofficial chip commettee at the FQ's. We had more fun in our meetings desiding what chips to make, than I could ever hope to have again, working in a casino. You would not believe some of the ideas that was discussed.