Yes I sold my entire Las Vegas chip collection to David Sarles. Why?

Back in the mid 1980's I started going to Las Vegas from my home in So. Cal. maybe four times a year. I'm not a gambler by nature but I became fascinated by the history of the City. In 1993 I thought about casino chips and opened the phone book to the "coins" section and saw an ad for Sahara Coins that also mentioned casino chips. I went there and found an application for the CCGTCC and attended the 1994 Convention. By the time I went home I still hadn't acquired a single chip but I learned a lot (like tokens are not the same as chips.). I'm sure people who had collected coins and such found chips collecting fairly familiar but I hadn't collected anything and, being an engineer, I started at the low end. Another surprise was that casinos had more than a single rack of chips in their history. (I figured you go to the Sands, buy a $5 chip and you're done.)

The next thirty years were a lot of fun. I enjoyed the collecting, the people and the shows....usually four a year. The Convention in June, Casinorama in March and October and the SuperBowl show in January. Not being a gambler and new to chips, I figured I'd just collect all Las Vegas chips. Maybe a naive mistake as that's a huge undertaking. I won't try to list all the wonderful experiences I had and the friends I've made as they were numerous. I would point out Bruce Landau and Doug Saito as being enormous early influences especially in chip education. Doug's auctions would tell you WHY you want to overbid on a particular chip. I've also not been particularly focused on condition. Maybe not a good strategy but it enable me to acquire many very rare chips with condition problems.

So that brings us to the current time frame. I'm 76 years old and in decent health so I certainly could have collected for a while longer. But it just wasn't that much fun. Maybe I had done too good a job but it was becoming very hard to find chips in the under $500 range. I have a few monster chips but I've mainly stayed away from the multi-thousand dollar stuff. Just too scary. I also didn't want to leave the collection to my executor (my niece.). So I began to think seriously about either donating or selling the collection.

Several dealers have approached me about purchasing the collection. A big concern was that so many of my chips would need to be carefully examined for condition (chips, cracks, discoloration, etc.) Some were missing inlays, had sun damage or had damaged reverse sides. I've known David Sarles for many years and admired his chip knowledge (way beyond my knowledge) and his largely anonymous contributions to our Club. I would sometimes drool over his magnificent collection of NCV chips (a favorite collecting focus of mine.). He contacted me with the idea of buying my collection and merging the collections into a super Las Vegas chip collection which intrigued me as it was a way for a major part of my collection to live on. So I agreed to sell the collection. I met David in Schenectady NY and delivered two enormously heavy file cabinets and gave him time to study the chips. He made an offer which I accepted.

I will be attending our June convention. It will be a little bittersweet for me. I will sorely miss the CCA and, more importantly, the friends I have made over the years.