In what year did .900 fine silver dollars stop being used in Las Vegas casinos?
291fifth
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Did they disappear as soon as the price of silver rose in the 1960's?
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Yes,they disappeared from the Casinos right away.....1965.
Occasionally they appeared in the retail market for a couple of more years just due to the fact there were so many here in Vegas/Reno.
bob
The casinos started sandblasting them about then.
It took some years for them to completely disappear.
We still got them for silver in 1980
My Aunt and Uncle went out to Las Vegas occasionally, my Dad asked them to bring him back some of the new copper-nickel slugs, which they kindly did - this was no later than 1968. I still have five or six of them somewhere here today - they were made by Franklin Mint. Designs feature various Casinos. I think this was a major piece of business for Franklin Mint for a few years.
I read somewhere several years ago that some of the casinos ground the date off their silver dollars so their patrons wouldn't leave with them.
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The Coinage Act of 1965 also prohibited production of 38.1mm dollar coins for five years. Vegas needed coins for slots (rhymes with "toys for tots") and began ordering their own tokens.
As soon as the silver dollar distribution was cut off on March 26, 1964, the coins began disappearing from casinos. Some casinos tried defacing them, but it was not long before their reserves ran low and conversion was made to tokens.
Yes... mid 60's... I remember some of the machines had them for a while (the one's that pushed them off a shelf, and some slots)....But when they disappeared, it was en masse.....almost overnight. Cheers, RickO
Why were silver dollars sandblasted?
To destroy their appeal to collectors and keep them in circulation in the casinos.
Did the slots accept Ike dollars once they were available in 1971?
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The gaming tokens still sounded like manhole covers being dropped into the metal tray. The allure of a win with the slot machine pumping out $1 tokens into that metal tray made by-standers look and magically open their wallets.
circa 1972 I did not see any silver dollars except in older machine display windows.
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Reminds me of the master counterfeiter who was replicating Casino Tokens in the 90s, Louis Colavecchio
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/03/nyregion/fake-casino-tokens-found.html
More info on the story
https://www.gamblingsites.com/info/famous-gamblers/louis-colavecchio/
all around collector of many fine things
Ike Dollars were used extensively during the period of their issue. I recall my parents coming back from a Las Vegas trip with a group of slightly over 100 of them. This was in the 1970s.
Gambling devices were the primary use of Ike dollars. They cost a casino almost nothing, compared to several cents for dollar-size tokens. Now all you get when you win is a paper slip, 5 bits of confetti, and the AFLAC goose honk.
Well, I went and found the five tokens/slugs that my Aunt and Uncle brought home for my Dad and since one of them is dated 1969, my relatives must have made this visit slightly later than I thought. All five are products of the Franklin Mint and have the stylized "F" or "FM" mintmark. All have a broken reeding. The earliest is dated 1965, three are dated 1966 (very small numerals) and one is dated 1969. Here are the photos:
I meant to post a pair of obverse, followed by a pair of reverses, but the computer may have messed me up. I think you can pair them without much difficulty.
Each has a slightly different weight! The Hotel Fremont is 22.5 grams (the low) and the Stardust is 24.7 grams (the high).
I lived in Tucson in the early 80's and took a few trips to Las Vegas. My buddy was playing the silver dollar slots and managed to win a $300 jackpot with a few pulls of the lever.
It sure sounded good hearing those heavy coins clinking and clanging into the tray. Nowadays you don't pull a handle or get the real coins. I liked the old days better......guess I understand why people sometimes get nostalgic.
I also read, in the 1960s, that they scratched off the date to make them unattractive to collectors.
Interesting side-bar from the draft article on Inco private pattern coins:
"Where Have all the Dollars Gone?
"Senator Douglas: Do you know whether the slot machines at Las Vegas will take silver dollars or only half dollars?
" Mr. Roosa: Well, the best evidence that I can give you, Senator, is that in the final days of what has been called the silver rush, when our remaining stocks shrank from $17 to $3 million, we made direct shipments to Nevada alone of more than half of that $14 million shrinkage.…This entire raid on the Treasury, which became news throughout the country with these long queues and all of the episodes on the steps, represented a taking from our stocks of less than $3.5 million in silver. The bulk [of] all of the silver that disappeared during that period was actually sent by us, and we might be criticized for this.... [to] Western States, and within these final days $7 million-plus went to Nevada, $2 million-plus went to Montana, and the rest scattered in other Western States, but these were what we were sure of as to the ultimate destination. "
But if a casino bought a dollar-sized token for, let's say 8 cents, and half the guests took one or more home as souvenirs of the visit, the casino made a profit of 92 cents per token. If they paid the Fed a dollar for an Ike dollar and a customer took one home, they made nothing.
There was a comment made about "broken reeding." The tokens had different reeding patterns to make it easier to sort them out be casino, and harder for customers to move tokens from one casino to another.
True. However, tokens were a continuing overhead cost. Ike dollars were not. The smart casinos had collectors' sets of tokens made to sell. There was no continuous flow of tokens and the casino paid all expenses. Ike dollars were commonly shipped in one day by air and at Treasury expense (to get them into 'circulation' of sorts). Casinos were quick to convert to Ike dollars in 1971, so it must have been a positive business decision versus private tokens.
Some time back in the early 1980's I had a chat with former ANACS Authenticator John Hunter, and he told me that he had recently testified as an expert witness against some guy that had been counterfeiting dollar tokens and smuggling them into that particular casino a couple of hundred pieces at a time in his wife's purse. They would walk in together, her with the bag on her shoulder, and sit down at two slots. They, or sometimes just he, would drop whatever they had brought in into the machines one time, and when they were done take whatever payout they had in real tokens from the machines and go cash it in.
He showed me one and it was a decent, passable counterfeit. The guy was a retired tool and die maker. At his trial the gonifff tried to justify it by saying that he was on a fixed income and needed to supplement it.
All of this is part of the fascinating day-to-day story of money in the economy. Much of this has not been told or even documented in one place. Any takers out there....
Good thread.
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I would be interested to see where the machines accepting these dollars ended up.
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And that's what made me quit slots.
Usually played craps anyway, but the sound was the draw on the slots.
Now, at Indian casinos, you have to play craps and roulette with ....CARDS.
They explained it, but it's not the same.
How do you play roulette with cards/
They were just converted. I know many machines still have the coin tray but obviously no longer in use.
When I play craps it’s the actual throw of the dice and the interactions at the table that make it exciting. Some things shouldn’t change!
I do not miss dropping dollars tokens into machines, and my black fingers. TITO - ticket in ticket out, is much cleaner.