Doug,

My husband and I were at a flea market/swap meet/antique fair several years ago. We bought an 8x10 frame that was filled with chips from Las Vegas. I wish I'd been patient enough to wait until we got home to disassemble it, and had documented the find with pictures. Unfortunately, I didn't document it . On the frame backing someone had written a note something like...On (January ___, 1964, I think) Chicago had a foot of snow, while we were having fun in the sun!"

The frame was filled with about 20-30 Las Vegas chips! Most of them were $1 chips, and a few were hot stamps. Thankfully, the chips were NOT glued down. Unfortunately, the chips were sitting on black velvet...which looked nice from the front, but some (not all) of the chip inlays absorbed dye from the velvet fabric. A couple of people here tried to tell me that the dark inlays were caused by the sun, but I know what we bought and I know that the dark side of the chip was against the black velvet. .

This chip was the one that really got my attention . We were pretty new to chip collecting when we found the framed collection, and at the time I knew that this chip was listed for a few hundred dollars. I don't think either of us had any idea what the other chips might have been worth, but I knew for sure that the arodie was a "good" one! .