Just catching up on the Chip Board for the week and noticed this post. Hank operated in a couple different places, Coos Bay being for the longest time, I believe.
"Floating" card games were once common in Oregon and some continue to operate, though not nearly so many since the coming of the indian casinos. In Oregon, it is legal in some jurisdictions to run and operate a blackjack or poker game, as long as the "house" is not participating. In other words, someone other than the restaurant/bar/club owner could run the gambling, but the house could only make money on auxillary services, such as food and drink. Make sense? Well, that's probably a reason they were never that popular. As you can imagine, the rules were often "bent" in many locales, but the net result is that there are indeed some nice chips that came out of Oregon over the years.