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Las Vegas Dollars—What a Tragedy


Roger

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For my 100th post I would like to share my Las Vegas Dollar that I purchased at auction. I paid just over melt for this 1880 S so the condition didn’t bother me. In fact I really didn’t look at this coin for quite awhile as it was set aside in the “scrap” pile. One day I decided to tube up my scrap and ran across it again. After I looked at it closely I took pity on this poor coin and decided to keep it as a sample for my collection. I really did not know what I had so the next coin show I took it along to have it looked at by one of the experts. Well I got my answer---“Why that’s a Las Vegas Dollar.” he went on to say “Ain’t worth much” (even though I didn’t ask for a valuation). <p><p>Here is a brief descripton of a "Las Vegas Dollar"--(well maybe not so brief ) : Before the Ike Dollar and prior to the time when the Casinos minted their own tokens for the dollar slot machines, the Casinos used real silver dollars. In the 1970’s the supply of silver dollars at the local banks started to dry up. This had the same effect at the Casinos as their supply started to dwindle as well. This was compounded by patrons taking home the Casino’s own inventory of silver dollars instead of cashing them in for paper. I believe the silver prices were starting to rise at the same time and might have been a partial motivator. Anyway, to circumvent the taking of the nice shiny silver dollars the Casinos came up with a solution—Take the bags of Silver Dollars out to the parking lot, dump them out into a pile and Sand Blast them. It didn’t matter what was in the bag to them as long as they worked in the slots. So to my example and why I call this a “Tragedy”---Pictured below is my 1880s Morgan. Hopefully from the pictures you can see the beautiful mirrored surfaces behind the sand blasted areas. What a shame!! Of course if the dollar hadn’t been blasted it would not be in my collection. It would be in someone else's collection in a PCGS holder with a label alluding to the Deep Proof Like Fields.<p><img src=http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/0/2/4/5/7/0/webimg/549323039_o.jpg><p><img src=http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/0/2/4/5/7/0/webimg/549323115_o.jpg><p><p><p>Post your examples!

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It's a great example of a dollar that has served in commerce, as they were designed to do. I have a special "affection" for my very worn and abused coins. It's kind of like they gave their all in service. I'd proudly have a coin like that in my collection.

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Interesting!

 

All I have is a gold plated Ike in a flip from a casino, which I think similiar to your dollar, was "altered" in an attempt to keep it distinct, and within the casino's system, though it may had also been a way to attract customers (e.g. "we have gold dollars!")

 

The earliest $1 tokens I've seen are from 1979 - the year that the SBA replaced the Ike.

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