Silver Dust Casino

Owner: @toad94
Inlay Design:
Year Produced:

The Silver Dust BCC set was born from a trip to Crystal, Colorado where I got to see the Old Mill (one of the more famous Colorado photo locations) in person as well as doing some family research to discover my great, great grandfather first came to Colorado in the 1880's to build houses in a mining town.

I wanted the color combos to be primarily earth-tone-y to mimic what you might see if you lived in the old mining towns. I also knew I wanted a black $1 after seeing the Olivia $1.

All of the central icons on the inlays relate to the mining towns in some way:

• $.25 - Old-style lamp
• $1 - Pick and shovel
• $2 - Whiskey bottle
• $3 - Horseshoe
• $5 - Donkey! (donkeys and mules were used extensively in mining camps. After the gold and silver rushes ended and people left the mining towns, some of the donkeys were set free to fend for themselves. The descendants of those donkeys roam around some of the mining towns like Cripple Creek to this day.)
• $10 - Head frame (this was at the top of a mine shaft, used with rope or cable to haul supplies, people, etc. in and out of the mine)
• $20 - Anvil (blacksmith shops were necessities in mining towns, of course, but I included it here especially beccause my grandfather was a blacksmith.)
• $25 - Wagon wheel (the double-denomination layout was inspired by Harvey's Wagon Wheel chips from Central City, a casino I used to play at frequently. There were wagon wheels in mining camps, obviously, but this is also a nod to that property.)
• $100 - The Old Mill in Crystal, Colorado. This is what lured me to Crystal which in turn inspired this set.
• $500 - Ore cart. Ya gotta haul the rocks out of the mine somehow.
• $1000 - Evergreen tree
• $5000 - Shop in Crystal, Colorado. This is a picture I took while in Crystal. It's the only non-drawn figure in this set.
• $25,000 - Pneumatic jack and hand jack with hammer. "Jacks" were chisels used to drill holes into the mine wall. The holes were then filled with dynamite, exploded, and the resulting rocks were hauled out of the mine to be processed to retrieve the gold and silver in the ore.