Sorry this is a reprint from CT, but CT was a bit messed up and now my Photobucket links are a bit messed up. I resized some of the original pictures bigger than Photobucket, though, so there's that. (y) :thumbsup:
Floyd and Clyde's Gold Rush
Sometime around 1895 my great grand-father, Floyd, and his younger brother, Clyde, were in the gold-mining town of Cripple Creek, Colorado. They would have been ~23 and 20 at the time.
One night they decided to play poker at a local saloon. Floyd played a while but stopped pretty much even. Clyde, though, played a lot longer. In fact, Clyde went on an unbelievable run that resulted in a pile of gold coins.
(just a stock photo of dudes playing poker)
At the time the U.S. had gold coins in $3, $5, $10, and $20 denominations. The daily pay for a miner back then was around $3, though, so any pile of gold coins was going to amount to a LOT of money. It would be nice to have known the high water mark for that stack but that detail has been lost to history.
(Here's the 1895 coins they would have been playing with)
By the time Floyd walked by to check on Clyde the stacks of gold coins had grown even larger. Floyd urged Clyde to get up and leave. Clyde yelled back “No way, I’m staying here ‘til I have it all!” I imagine that rubbed the players the wrong way since nobody likes a losing streak rubbed in their faces, but from what I've heard Clyde was not the demure type and not all 20 year olds are all that humble, either. Anyway, Floyd (still trying to be the voice of reason) briefly pleaded with Clyde to leave. Clyde refused. Floyd sat down behind Clyde and bit his tongue.
A while later (probably in the wee hours of the night) Clyde pushed the
last of his coins into a pot and subsequently lost the hand. I don’t know the details of how the game was played, if fresh (or cheating) players came into the game or not, if the deal was on the level, or if everything was fair and square and Clyde just pushed his luck too far, but in the end he lost it all. Floyd probably had to help Clyde out of his chair and out the door. I imagine Clyde was heart-broken. But still, what a great night (for a while, anyway).
In hindsight it’s probably a good thing Clyde lost it all—walking home at night in a semi-lawless mining town with a bag full of gold might have ended up with Floyd and Clyde getting shot in the back and then I wouldn’t be here telling this story.
Floyd & Clyde years later. Floyd is on the far left; Clyde is on the far right.
In honor of this epic run of cards (and because I wanted to take advantage of JimB’s offer to use the smooth no-mold [edit: back in 2011]) I came up with “Floyd & Clyde’s Gold Rush”. I know the design is a lot busier than typical C&S chips would have been, but I wasn’t going for that exact look.
Even though I ordered charcoal hundos from ASM the idea of octagons stuck with me so I ordered 50 of those from Old West Poker Supplies. Salvatore was great to work with and the octagons came out very nice. The edge shows some inconsistency in the ink but I think that's to be expected trying to get solid black on ceramics. As always ASM was great and the chips are super flat--no spinners whatsoever. There's plenty of thickness differences in the chips but that's exactly as advertised and it doesn't bother me a bit. As a bonus, a barrel of octagons and a barrel of ASMs are exactly the same height--I didn't expect that.
A special thanks goes out to
@jbutler for sending his Clermont chips my way. If I hadn't seen and felt the smooth no-mold in person I probably wouldn't have ordered these. Seeing them up close made this an easy decision--thanks Jack!
suited speed cloth and smooth no-mold textures... kinda neat
I also have some older shots I want to include here.
