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Windwalker’s Chipping Journey in Pr0n0grAph1C Detail (11 Viewers)

One more rarity for today, some quarter pie TRK $5s from Sharkey’s casino in Gardnerville.

Fqj14C7.jpg
 
Okku said:
This is the thing... The price will stay around the same as long as none are sold which Krish said he will NOT be selling any of them.

If someone else would have had them and started to sell them slowly then the price of the singles would take a major nose dive.
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I disagree 100%. The price for these as singles will drop substantially. If a chip sold for $5,000 with one known six months ago, the knowledge that 100 more are out there will definitely impact what the next buyer will pay for the one. While I trust Krish’s word 100%, what happens if he quits the hobby unexpectedly? Would you pay $3,000, $4,000, or more for this chip with this knowledge? I would guess that a former unique $5,000 value chip would drop to less than $500 with 100 more known. The information changes the equation.
 
All three of those, green 25c/blue$1/qpie$5, are in the same ballpark in the price guide, either H or I. I also found a red solid hot stamped 50c chip that is a little more rare, coming in at "K" rarity (60-74). (photo from chipguide)
1654643093774.png
 
Figured it might be time to start showing some of the THC finds from the probate hoard. I will admit to knowing NOTHING about this chip yet, and there are no other denominations in the collection. Just 201 of these 312 red chips with a pretty cool inlay. They appear somewhat casino-used.

7243F494-247C-4047-8AA8-74A24A2B70B9.jpeg
 
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Windwalker said:
Figured it might be time to start showing some of the THC finds from the probate hoard. I will admit to knowing NOTHING about this chip yet, and there are no other denominations in the collection. Just 201 of these 312 red chips with a pretty cool inlay. They appear somewhat casino-used.

View attachment 926227
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How long until we start hearing the stories about Paulson or Christy jones remaking these in the 1990’s?
 
Okku said:
Last one of those $5s sold somewhere around $750-1000.
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Yep. Chip Rack says Z2 ($1100-1600).

Not any more!

The most I've spent on a single is about $100. I would not enjoy a hoard of such a single being found and costing me $90 in value, but that's the amount of risk I'm willing to make on a chip. The amount of my tolerance for loss, however, is chicken feed to some of the chips Krish found in this estate sale. Jackpot! is an understatement.
 
I have been collecting since 1994. I didn’t spend much time in the early days with the inner circle. However, I had heard of the small handfuls of chips coming out of TR King at the time. The talk of full reproduction racks started a week ago, and I tend to dismiss it, especially in light of the Holiday chips. Hopefully @Windwalker has more of the non-TRK chips to show from this lot, as I believe that it will provide further support that his TRK’s were made in the 1960’s, not the 1990’s.

I would love to know the name of the deceased who had them, as it might lead everyone to the conclusion that everything is early and original.
 
JWC said:
more of the non-TRK chips to show from this lot, as I believe that it will provide further support that his TRK’s were made in the 1960’s
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At first I was a little skeptical, but then after looking at order cards and so on I figured they were the real deal.
JWC said:
I would love to know the name of the deceased who had them, as it might lead everyone to the conclusion that everything is early and original.
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I'd love to know too because whoever it was knew exactly what they had and could have been associated with gaming in Nevada.
 
JWC said:
I have been collecting since 1994. I didn’t spend much time in the early days with the inner circle. However, I had heard of the small handfuls of chips coming out of TR King at the time. The talk of full reproduction racks started a week ago, and I tend to dismiss it, especially in light of the Holiday chips. Hopefully @Windwalker has more of the non-TRK chips to show from this lot, as I believe that it will provide further support that his TRK’s were made in the 1960’s, not the 1990’s.

I would love to know the name of the deceased who had them, as it might lead everyone to the conclusion that everything is early and original.
Click to expand...

John, one of the original reasons I didn’t post a lot of these chips is because I was cognizant of the singles market, and I really didn’t want to cause too much of a stir. I would write / talk about the finds because I thought they were good stories to share with the community.

But then a mini pack of digital hyenas led by a brightly colored rodent decided to continually use micro aggressive taunts and undertake a form of online bullying about these finds I mentioned. For me, chipping is just an escape from the ridiculously crazy work life I lead, and it’s a welcome respite from an exhausting day — there’s something about chips that’s so overwhelmingly joyful, it really helps make the weeks better.

But the taunts / jabs were so consistent, even though I mostly just ignored them, I finally decided that I might as well post some of the finds, if only to quell the noise a little bit.

But, I may have robbed Peter to pay Paul, because now there are all these claims of exact replica chips made by TR King in the 90s.

I’ve actually been quite amused by the sudden claims of racks of casino replica chips with shaped inlays — mostly because if that were true, where are the rest of them? Why don’t the people with the stories and information bring them forward and show us that they exist? One theory is that they have the chips, but have been hoarding them to sell as singles. I find this whole “price guide” thing silly, because it seems to have been arbitrarily graded and put together by one or two people, who couldn’t possibly know what happened to every chip from every casino.

I collect comics as well, and the things about those is that there is a wide enough market of buyers that most of the rare ones are known, and the grading system allows for the tracking of the rarest ones. That said, even in that community, we’re waiting for some attic somewhere to reveal the next big collection that no one ever knew existed.

For example, when US Postal worker Gary Dalhberg of Minneapolis, MN died in a 2010 house fire, it brought to light his extensive collection that was dubbed the Twin Cities pedigree. The condition-pedantic collector had extensive runs of Marvel, DC and other publishers from the Silver Age and above. The collection of over 6000 comics eventually sold for well over $52 million.

I don’t know enough about the history one way or the other to know what’s real, but I can’t share the provenance just yet because there are still about 30,000 chips, die and other Casino memorabilia left in the estate that I’m negotiating a purchase on.
 
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Windwalker said:
John, one of the original reasons I didn’t post a lot of these chips is because I was cognizant of the singles market, and I really didn’t want to cause too much of a stir. I would write / talk about the finds because I thought they were good stories to share with the community.

But then a mini pack of digital hyenas led by a brightly colored rodent decided to continually use micro aggressive taunts and undertake a form of online bullying about these finds I mentioned. For me, chipping is just an escape from the ridiculously crazy work life I lead, and it’s a welcome respite from an exhausting day — there’s something about chips that’s so overwhelmingly joyful, it really helps make the weeks better.

But the taunts / jabs were so consistent, even though I mostly just ignored them, I finally decided that I might as well post some of the finds, if only to quell the noise a little bit.

But, I may have robbed Peter to pay Paul, because now there are all these claims of exact replica chips made by TR King in the 90s.

I’ve actually been quite amused by the sudden claims of racks of casino replica chips with shaped inlays — mostly because if that were true, where are the rest of them? Why don’t the people with the stories and information bring them forward and show us that they exist?

I don’t know enough about the history one way or the other to know what’s real, but I can’t share the provenance just yet because there are still about 30,000 chips, die and other Casino memorabilia left in the estate that I’m negotiating a purchase on.
Click to expand...
You’ve been bullied because a few members here didn’t believe your story? And think you are over-saturating your photos? Wow, that’s some thin skin.

But no one threatened to bitch slap you, right? Like you threatened to bitch slap Barrie?

You might have gotten that all scrubbed. You have been able to get it scrubbed multiple times. This post will probably get scrubbed.

But you… YOU threatened to bitch slap someone here and paid no consequence. Maybe you are a bully. :unsure:
 
GianThaMan said:
How come the edge spots don’t match the face on the top chips in the right and back stacks?

Edit to add clarification photo:
View attachment 925621
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leo822 said:
@RainmanTrail answered this before if I remember right.
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Yes, I looked into this a few years back. I had some of the earlier issue TRKs that I noticed this on as well. I know I had it on an El Morocco Club $5, and a couple of other chips. I also noticed it again when I was perusing chips at the convention. What I learned was that some colors are more dense than others, and when the chips are compressed, it can create a cavity with certain color combos which results in an adjacent color bleeding over on the edge (it also happens on the surfaces sometimes). If you were to break the chip in half right at that point, you would notice that immediately behind the green overlap, the chip is actually solid orange. It's basically an orange quarter pie piece that is wearing a thin green skin on the edge. David Spragg talks about this phenomenon somewhere (I forget if it was here or on TCB, but I know I've read it before). It's similar to what happens when chips have split spots. One color is more dense than the other and it penetrates the turf of the other color when under pressure, causing the split.

As for the quarter pies not being symmetrical, as someone mentioned above, this is due to the fact that the slugs which are inserted into the molds are larger in diameter than the mold itself, so if they are not placed perfectly in the center, it will cause the trapezoidal effect that @Windwalker refers to above.

As far as whether or not these chips are some sort of 90s replica, I call bullshit. These are 100% authentic issues in my opinion. If you look at the inlays very closely, you'll notice that they are printed on linen, not paper. This was the inlay medium of choice at TRK only in the early years. They would later abandon the linen inlays (perhaps in the 60s? I forget when, but it was decades before the 90s). You can even look at some of the casinos where they had multiple runs of chips made and see that even for the casinos that had linen inlays, they would later switch to paper inlays despite them not being a perfect match when secondaries or tertiaries were produced. While I suppose it's theoretically possible that they kept linen stock laying around for decades in an evil plot to replicate some old chips for the purpose of deceiving a handful of imbecilic singles collectors (remember, these casinos were defunct, and these chips could not have been cashed in at a cage), but I highly doubt it. Also worth noting is the fact that the only people making these claims also happen to be people whose collections stand to lose significant value by the surfacing of these chips. So, they say, "FAKES! REPLICAS!" yet provide zero evidence. I say bullshit. These are absolutely legit. And the fact that his find unearths early/rare TRKs, Paulsons, and C&Js is a meaningful factor as well. Were they all in cahoots then? All 3 being reproduced by the same evil chip deceivers? LOL. No, obviously not. Also worth pointing out is that the manufacturing processes evolved over time. TRK got better at making chips, and their QC improved. The fact that these are "flawed" is further evidence of their place in history.
 
Saoliver said:
You’ve been bullied because a few members here didn’t believe your story? And think you are over-saturating your photos? Wow, that’s some thin skin.

But no one threatened to bitch slap you, right? Like you threatened to bitch slap Barrie?

You might have gotten that all scrubbed. You have been able to get it scrubbed multiple times. This post will probably get scrubbed.

But you… YOU threatened to bitch slap someone here and paid no consequence. Maybe you are a bully. :unsure:
Click to expand...

Yep, it's still PCF around here. :rolleyes:
 
RainmanTrail said:
Yes, I looked into this a few years back. I had some of the earlier issue TRKs that I noticed this on as well. I know I had it on an El Morocco Club $5, and a couple of other chips. I also noticed it again when I was perusing chips at the convention. What I learned was that some colors are more dense than others, and when the chips are compressed, it can create a cavity with certain color combos which results in an adjacent color bleeding over on the edge (it also happens on the surfaces sometimes). If you were to break the chip in half right at that point, you would notice that immediately behind the green overlap, the chip is actually solid orange. It's basically an orange quarter pie piece that is wearing a thin green skin on the edge. David Spragg talks about this phenomenon somewhere (I forget if it was here or on TCB, but I know I've read it before). It's similar to what happens when chips have split spots. One color is more dense than the other and it penetrates the turf of the other color when under pressure, causing the split.

As for the quarter pies not being symmetrical, as someone mentioned above, this is due to the fact that the slugs which are inserted into the molds are larger in diameter than the mold itself, so if they are not placed perfectly in the center, it will cause the trapezoidal effect that @Windwalker refers to above.

As far as whether or not these chips are some sort of 90s replica, I call bullshit. These are 100% authentic issues in my opinion. If you look at the inlays very closely, you'll notice that they are printed on linen, not paper. This was the inlay medium of choice at TRK only in the early years. They would later abandon the linen inlays (perhaps in the 60s? I forget when, but it was decades before the 90s). You can even look at some of the casinos where they had multiple runs of chips made and see that even for the casinos that had linen inlays, they would later switch to paper inlays despite them not being a perfect match when secondaries or tertiaries were produced. While I suppose it's theoretically possible that they kept linen stock laying around for decades in an evil plot to replicate some old chips for the purpose of deceiving a handful of imbecilic singles collectors (remember, these casinos were defunct, and these chips could not have been cashed in at a cage), but I highly doubt it. Also worth noting is the fact that the only people making these claims also happen to be people whose collections stand to lose significant value by the surfacing of these chips. So, they say, "FAKES! REPLICAS!" yet provide zero evidence. I say bullshit. These are absolutely legit. And the fact that his find unearths early/rare TRKs, Paulsons, and C&Js is a meaningful factor as well. Were they all in cahoots then? All 3 being reproduced by the same evil chip deceivers? LOL. No, obviously not. Also worth pointing out is that the manufacturing processes evolved over time. TRK got better at making chips, and their QC improved. The fact that these are "flawed" is further evidence of their place in history.
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Thank you for this information @RainmanTrail !
 
It should be said that TRK did make racks of "replica" chips. They probably made the Kings Crown version 2 chips in the 90s. But that casino never opened. They also made the sets of hot stamped El Rancho large crown chips, but in the 1980s well after the casino burned down, and they didn't copy anything that already existed.
 
Windwalker said:
I don’t know enough about the history one way or the other to know what’s real, but I can’t share the provenance just yet because there are still about 30,000 chips, die and other Casino memorabilia left in the estate that I’m negotiating a purchase on.
Click to expand...
 

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