My hopes are dashed

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned having found a Tropicana poker chips numbered "1 of 1000." Over the weekend I ran into a poker dealer of my aquaintance who told me that many commemorative chips are done that way, with all of them labeled as "1." In other words, the "1" doesn't mean "#1 out of 1000," but rather, "one of a thousand." If I found other similar chips, they, too, would carry the "1 of 1000" mark.

This is certainly plausible, but I've never seen it before. I have in my collection at least a dozen chips that are numbered (see, e.g., the one pictured here), and none of them is #1. So in my experience, the most common way for chips to be issued is with no numerical markings, the second most common way is simply with the designation that it's a "limited edition of ____" (usually 500 or 1000), with nothing unique on each chip, the third most common form is the sequential numbering system, wherein each chip is uniquely numbered, and the least common is this system with all of them called "1 of _____". The dealer said that in his experience, the last is more common than the sequentially numbered series, at least in recent years.

Anyway, maybe I don't have my retirement fund all in one chip after all.

Let me state for the record that I think labeling the entire run of chips as "1 of ____" is a low-down, despicable, deceptive practice that should be immediately banned.


The illustration above, incidentally, has an intentional dual meaning. I've been in a bit of a poker funk lately, which explains my lack of posting for the past few days. I haven't lacked material, just interest in writing. It happens from time to time, then it passes. This time, it's probably related to having had five consecutive losing days last week, which tends to sour me on the game for a while. But I know from past experience that it turns around again before too long.