Those who saved gambling souvenirs may be in the chips

Saturday, Feb. 22, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Or maybe you kept it because you didn't want to walk out the door broke.

No matter. But did you ever think that little chip might be worth thousands of dollars - more than you ever won or lost that long-ago night?

At the same time that gambling activity is proliferating throughout the nation, the value of casino memorabilia is soaring.

"It's phenomenal," says Dean Richmond.

From the tiny coastal town of Yachats, where the only legal gambling is offered by the Oregon Lottery, Richmond and his wife, Jodi Sones, are cashing in the growing popularity of collecting almost anything connected with gambling.

Their Casino Collectibles business is the oldest and one of the largest of about a dozen companies that sell gaming-related memorabilia, from chips to free drink tokens, to matchbooks, to casino floor-show programs.

Colorful chips - most of them from closed-down casinos with names like The Shy Clown, the Jockey Club, the Hide-Away, or the Barrel House - are the biggest sellers. They sell for $5 and up - sometimes WAY up.

Some come with a story, like the ones marked D4C. They're from a casino at screen cowboy Hoot Gibson's D4C ranch near Las Vegas. It's a place where women in the 1950s, anxious to shuck their husbands, stayed to meet the six-week residency requirement for a quickie Nevada divorce. The D4C name reflected their future marital status.

Don't look for the Casino Collectible store in Yachats. Richmond and Sones don't have one. Their only retail outlet is a shop in Reno, and nearly all of their business - which has grossed up to $80,000 a year - is done through mail orders and visits to trade shows around the country.

In their small Yachats house, they're literally in the chips. Thousands of chips once used at gaming tables are stacked in rack after rack along with myriad other gaming items, which fill drawers, closets and cupboards. Most of their customers, they say, are gamblers, but there are some who just want a nostalgic souvenir of a certain casino.

Richmond, 61, is a former social services director and antique dealer; Sones, 48, a former insurance agent. They got into the casino collectibles business after he noticed that some of the hottest-selling items in his antique store were old casino chips.

Ten years ago, the couple started the first business devoted entirely to casino collectibles - at one time owning two shops in Reno and attending 20 trade shows a year as well as selling by mail. They've cut back now. The move to Yachats last September reflected a desire for a slower-paced life.

Whenever they attended a trade show in Portland, they always tried to make it to the Oregon coast. Finally they decided to make it their home, and they've never regretted it.

"It's kind of like being on vacation, but taking everything with you," Richmond says.

When the sun shines, they're often on the beach. When it rains, they're on the phone, tracking down leads on collectibles to add to their inventory. Or maybe filling mail orders and tabulating bids on their month-long "auctions" done by mail and fax.

Each month they send out an auction inventory list - complete with color pictures - of chips for sale. Customers mail or fax bids, and before bid deadlines, callers can check on the current high offer for any item. Their database includes the names of about 2,500 collectors.

Casino Collectibles' biggest mail-auction sale was a black $100 chip with a brass inlay from the early days of gangster Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel casino, what Richmond calls "the first of the big carpet joints" in Las Vegas. The value of the chip, which sold for $1,285, came not only from its historic origins but also because it was among only a few of its kind.

"Bugsy Siegel opened the casino on Christmas Day 1946," Richmond says. "The Flamingo did very poorly for 30 days. It lost money, closed, then reopened later. These (rare) chips were used for the brief period of time when it opened."

The couple never expected prices to climb so much so fast. Chips they bought for 20 cents a few years ago now go for $40 or more, they say. They've made a lot of connections with the gambling industry and other collectors during their decade in the business and are always adding to their inventory.

But some of the most valuable simply turn up by chance. Richmond's sure there are a lot of valuable chips tucked away in dresser drawers around the country. People tend to hang onto them simply because they once had a cash value, he says.

Curiously enough, neither Richmond nor Sones ever gambles. And Richmond doesn't think gaming is healthy because too often people gamble money they can't afford to lose.

But casino gambling is here to stay, he says, with a foothold in all but a few states. He predicts gambling and gambling-related collecting will both continue to grow.

In fact, you can bet on it, he says.