One of my other collections, Chips and salsa anyone?

Like most collector's I have a couple small side collections.  One of those is Casino chips.  This started off with me playing poker.  Back when I lived in the small Alaskan town of Haines there wasn't a whole lot to do at night and a couple of the bars offered poker.  At one time you could almost play poker 7 nights a week in town.  Well the Harbor Bar got in on the nation wide poker league World Tavern Poker.  As luck would have it  I actually met my wife playing poker there.  Anyway, the league has 4 seasons and every 2 seasons they have an open. One usually in Atlantic City and the other in Las Vegas.  I was lucky enough to have won a few bar championships when I lived down there and the bar owner Mike use to put up 500 bucks for your travel and accomodations down to the open. For winning the bar championship or tournament of champions you also won the right to the big tournament at the open and the winner won a seat at the main event at the World Series of Poker. Not a bad deal right?  Well I never won the seat, but I have made some money playing poker.  Since I moved back to Anchorage my poker playing has been limited. .  So having been down to Vegas a few times, as well as, frequenting the casinos in my home state of Wisconsin and else where I started saving dollar chips from the different casinos I've been too.  I also started collecting the promotional chips and card savers that went along with the hobby.  So I thought I'd share that collection with you.  I'm going to break it up as I've got quite a few chips.

First I'll start with the World Tavern Poker chips and card savers I have.

A card saver is a chip you put on top of your cards to protect them from being mucked.  People use all sorts of things for card savers, but a lot of players have special chips they like to use. This is my 2008 Tournament of Champions card saver I won.

Here is my 2007 TOC Championship card saver. I also won a seat in Vegas winning this tournament too.

When you get to the open you get a goodie bag and inside are all sorts of things and usually they have at least one card saver made especially for the open.  This was the 2007 one.

And here is the 2008 open card saver.  Every open has a theme.  That year it was the Olympic Games.

Bars that host WTP have to pay the organization, but also get a kit every year with prizes and such too.  In 2007 one of the goodies that the bars got to give out where these Tournament champion chips.

Some years it was t-shirts and some years nothing.
When you go to the opens, there are lots of chip giveaways and exclusive chips to be found.  Some come in your goodie bag, others are given away as promotions by sponsors, some you get by entering tournaments and some you have to do something to get, like yelling "I SURVIVED THE WTP OPEN"

Which was the 2007 theme.

In 2009 the theme was the Wizard of Oddz and obvious take on the Wizard of Oz and a western theme.

This chip you got if you were in the National Championship tournament.

WTP also had some promos too.  Like this one touting its new online poker tourneys hosted by the All in Club.

You got this chip for signing with the Spade Club. I can't even remember what that was.

And there you have it.  I haven't gotten any more WTP chips since 2009. It's still going stong, but I just checked and there aren't any WTP tourneys in Anchorage anymore.

Next my non-Vegas Casino chips.