First, the chips . If I had to pick a small group of favorites, it would be these:

I fear that I'll never have a complete set of Archie's chips, but at least I can add the 2005 Banquet Chip to my collection. The $5 Bucket of Blood completes the set. I now have every chip from that casino - all two of them . Thanks to James Campiglia, I now have another of the great Polar Bear chips from the Commercial Hotel in Elko. The Tahoe Nugget roulettes fill a couple of holes in that binder page. They are special additions, because they came from the Bill O'Day collection. And of course, I had to brave the 106 degree heat and pick up a few dollar chips from the nearby joints, even though I don't really collect Vegas. Slots-A-Fun is such a funky little place that hasn't changed much since day one.

Now the thoughts..... FUN stuff: Sitting at THE Banquet table, sharing a couple of meals with my friend Steve Blust, listening to Doug Saito (both at the podium AND behind his table giving people a hard time ), spending the entire day on Thursday just wading through binders & boxes of chips, putting a few faces to emails & posts, and just the whole atmosphere in general. REGRETS: Not prying my eyes away from the tables long enough to look at more name tags, and having to leave early on Friday. OH, and rumor has it that I won a little chunk of the Building Fund Raffle, although that has not been officially confirmed. What a bummer that I couldn't be around to hear my name called. But, if really true, it will be nice to be thrown out of the "I Have Never Won Anything In My Life" Club.

Congrats to Gene and Eric - new HOF'ers, and thanks to ALL the club volunteers that do such a great job. I sure appreciate it, and know everyone else does as well. Wow, what a great, great time!