Palm Beach Cruise Line (PBCL) Showcase (1 Viewer)

[fishsaybloop]

This thread is to dedicated to Palm Beach Cruise Line (PBCL) - some of the best wet chips and their fascinating history as a casino and how they found their way to PCF.

About the Casino
The Palm Beach Casino Line was founded in 1997, and operated two casino cruises from Port of Palm Beach in Riviera Beach, Florida.

The Palm Beach Princess (where these chips were felted) spent 22 years in Palm Beach and served 470,000 passengers a year during its best years offering twice daily five-hour gambling cruises. It was an 8 deck, 421 foot, 6,659 GRT, 800 person capacity vessel with 15,000 sqft of Class III gaming casino, 400+ slot machines, 30+ table games, poker, sports book (satellite TV) and bingo.

According to their now defunct Twitter it was "the only true 'Las Vegas style' gambling & entertainment destination in South Florida."

History
Built in 1964 in Finland, the MS Ilmatar started as a humble ferry before being upgraded fifteen years later into a cruise ship including a casino, pool, gym, cinema and lounge

In 1984, she was renamed Viking Princess (under Crown Cruise Lines) and made her way from Europe to the US where she spent most of her years cruising between West Palm Beach and the Caribbean

In 1997, she was renamed Palm Beach Princess under new ownership with Palm Beach Casino Line, where she served as a popular holiday attraction for the next 12 years.

Palm Beach Princess in December 2007 - Jon Rawlinson (Wikipedia)

By 2009, things were going downhill, with the failure of its main engine, it was forced to rely on tugboats and its auxiliary engines to keep its gaming operations afloat. With a missed voyages, crew riots and liquidity issues, the Princess filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with over $2 million in debt.

In 2010, during Ch 11 proceedings, the owners made unsuccessful and dubious attempts to turn the ship into a floating hotel in Haiti for relief workers and oil spill response workers on the Gulf Coast. These claims were called out as a ploy to avoid paying their foreign crew their wages and air fare back to their home countries. The ship was ordered by a federal bankruptcy judge to vacate Port of Palm Beach and the ship headed to Freeport, Bahamas. It spent 3 years there before finally being salvaged for parts in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in 2015.

And the story continues on PCF...

Scraping of Palm Beach Princess (12 June 2015) in Santo Domingo - Photo credit of Birger Carlo (Wikipedia)

The Chips

Sourced from ChipGuide by a member, then resized and arranged horizontally. So credits to that member.

The earliest reference I've found to these chips on PCF was a sale ad in 2015 for a rack of $5s, which was then followed up by two large salvage purchases.

The first purchase started with an eBay listing in 2016, with ~2400 chips rescued by @bivey from a somewhat questionable seller. The chips were shipped from Santo Domingo to the US, got held up at customs before finally going through some much needed chip rehab and out into PCF. Not all purchased chips arrived and not all chips arrived safely, but plenty were saved.

In 2018, they resurfaced again off-forum on a Miami Craigslist post, and an opening offer at $5 / chip by Michael, who runs a dealer school in Florida, who had salvaged 3500-4000 chips. A second batch was rescued by @Lemonzest but not without a fair share of challenges (e.g. mailing checks via post, chips not arriving in full, etc)

For THC chips, $0.50, $1, $5, $25 and $100 were made in both SCV and LCV versions. Unfortunately only the $5s - $100s have been found in quantity. The $1s were confirmed to have been thrown off a pier, which was apparently a norm for casino cruises.

Denom	Colors	Chip Count
$0.50	Yellow / Canary Yellow (?)	Singles
$1	White, Pink, Orchid (?)	Singles
$5	Red, Gold, Mustard (?)	710
$25	Sherbet / Day Green, Blaze Orange, Sky Blue	2778 - 4018
$100	Black, Arc Yellow, Hot Pink	1105
Total		4593 - 5855

If any others have more accurate or complete information would love to know and update this.

 

[fishsaybloop]

Creating a PBCL leaded tribute set started as an idea in Oct 2021 after seeing the $25 and $100 and realising that the $1 and $5 were pretty much impossible to find. A year and many iterations later, it's finally playable and nearly complete (still looking for 30x more $5s). Here’s to 2 years on PCF!

Huge thanks to the many awesome chippers for their help along the way! @moechar for sharing and sparring on the set design, @Gear / @Wifey for the flawless labels as always, @Nanook with top notch inlay removals, @Josh Kifer with precision milling and of course many others including @casinochipper22, @steam, @Thisfiendis138, @jpietrella, @Windwalker, @superchromix, @Lemonzest, @ReallyGoodUsername, @MarquetteMonkey, @DirtyTIVA and @Godzilla28.

 

[Saxplayer]

Those are sharp What is the $5 base chip? The yellow fracs looks great too.

 

[LeLe]

Amazing history and set, bro

Definitely a keeper set for life

 

[doublebooyah85]

I once played poker there in 2007!

Fantastic write up and photos @fishsaybloop! We need you to write every intro for showcase threads!

 

[harrysallout]

Sourced from ChipGuide by a member, then resized and arranged horizontally. So credits to that member.

 

[JeepologyOffroad]

Was waiting for someone to use that $5 base chip. Great use here. Nice work again @fishsaybloop

 

[moechar]

 

[fishsaybloop]

Those are sharp What is the $5 base chip? The yellow fracs looks great too.

These were Beavers 5

 

[Skagglio]

Great writeup and set, I think the replacements you chose go even better with the inlay than the originals.

 

[Lemonzest]

I started and quit building this set several times because it was difficult to find the right THC chips to fill in the gaps. You absolutely knocked it out of the park! I love your selection of $5 chips. Wonderful execution in what must be a one of a kind! 10/10 !

 

[allforcharity]

I believe that the PBCL company was also involved in the ill-fated Big Easy Casino ship, for which me and @Potsie1 acquired a portion of the cash chips. I know the same Michael in Boynton Beach FL has an incomplete set of roulette chips from the same ship, which I tried to acquire for nostalgic reasons but was unable to make a deal.

 

[fishsaybloop]

I believe that the PBCL company was also involved in the ill-fated Big Easy Casino ship, for which me and @Potsie1 acquired a portion of the cash chips. I know the same Michael in Boynton Beach FL has an incomplete set of roulette chips from the same ship, which I tried to acquire for nostalgic reasons but was unable to make a deal.

You’re right! The other ship was the Big Easy Casino. The owners basically ran up a bunch of debt and then had to liquidate.

Wow that’s very cool thanks for sharing! I heard there are also some octagon chips. Not sure if Michael has those too. Was he the original seller in 2016?

Add some pr0n of the Big Easy chips!

 

[softchewy]

@fishsaybloop Set looks great! Thanks for the background info.
I see you have some of the "faded" $100s also.. Do you know if they were manufactured with different colors or what happened to them (sun, oxi bath?)

Put together a set a few years ago (still have it) using some relabeled $.50, $1s and some stand in Aruba Palm Beach $5s.
Always thought a 312 edgespot would work better as a $1 over the original 412 - Silver Sevens fit in nicely.

 

[louBdub]

So beautiful, lovely set

 

[Lemonzest]

@fishsaybloop Set looks great! Thanks for the background info.
I see you have some of the "faded" $100s also.. Do you know if they were manufactured with different colors or what happened to them (sun, oxi bath?)

When I received the bulk lot from Florida some of the $100 chips had different looking edge spots. It almost looked like a separate run of chips that used different edge spot colors. Like one chip used Peach and the other used Arc Yellow. No clue what really is going on there and I didn't wash the chips at all.

The only chips I ended up washing were a few racks of the $25 that came out great.

 

[fishsaybloop]

@fishsaybloop Set looks great! Thanks for the background info.
I see you have some of the "faded" $100s also.. Do you know if they were manufactured with different colors or what happened to them (sun, oxi bath?)

Put together a set a few years ago (still have it) using some relabeled $.50, $1s and some stand in Aruba Palm Beach $5s.
Always thought a 312 edgespot would work better as a $1 over the original 412 - Silver Sevens fit in nicely.
View attachment 1111774

Love the Silver Sevens and Aruba Palm Beach in the line-up, there's a flow in the earth tones. I was considering the silver sevens as well but ultimately went with the NYNY $1s for a more nautical vibe.

I'm not 100% sure either about the 'faded' arc yellows, but I think there is some variance in the color of arc yellows from Paulson similar to what we see on radiant reds. Saw this example recently (photo stolen from @TricycleClub) on the color variance on CdM $20.

 

[softchewy]

Love the Silver Sevens and Aruba Palm Beach in the line-up, there's a flow in the earth tones. I was considering the silver sevens as well but ultimately went with the NYNY $1s for a more nautical vibe.

I'm not 100% sure either about the 'faded' arc yellows, but I think there is some variance in the color of arc yellows from Paulson similar to what we see on radiant reds. Saw this example recently (photo stolen from @TricycleClub) on the color variance on CdM $20.

Yeah I have seen variations, though for the PBCLs, the other edgespot also changed (pink vs hot pink).
Not sure what the V edgespot color is, but I wouldn't call it Arc Yellow as it is just too different. Looks more like Melon or something else.
My best guess is it is similar to the Empress Joliet $100s where there were different runs (SCV vs LCV) with one different color edgespot (hot pink vs pink respectively)
I know for the radiant red, the formula was actually changed.. Paulson probably should have renamed radiant red when they changed it.
anyway, just curious if anyone had info about it, thanks.. and Great set

 

[anstossfreak]

@fishsaybloop Set looks great! Thanks for the background info.
I see you have some of the "faded" $100s also.. Do you know if they were manufactured with different colors or what happened to them (sun, oxi bath?)

Put together a set a few years ago (still have it) using some relabeled $.50, $1s and some stand in Aruba Palm Beach $5s.
Always thought a 312 edgespot would work better as a $1 over the original 412 - Silver Sevens fit in nicely.
View attachment 1111774

Great choice on the $1 relabel chip! I use the same Silver Seven $1 chip for my relabel PBCL $1.
I also have a little nice Palm Beach Cruise Line set:

 

[louBdub]

This set deserves more attention

 

[graywolf]

This story is fascinating. Thank you for putting it together. I spent a lot of my younger years in West Palm and watched the rise and fall of the casino cruise. It’s a shame they pitched all those chips overboard.