Original ASM Club Cleopatra Trinidad & Tobago (HHR)

These chips were ordered from ASM but the casino never opened. I’m not clear about the exact details of how they came to the market, but I know for sure that by 2012 they were being offered for sale by ASM Vegas (via the Pokerchipsonline storefront), Kardwell, and CaragGails (remember them?). If I recall correctly, they had been available for some time before that. Kardwell even had them listed with a picture in their print catalogs circa 2012. Scans of the chips were uploaded to ChipGuide in 2008, so its possible there were already sets around before I started chipping. At any rate, they were still one of the newer sets to hit the market when I first got into chipping. In 2012 I decided to build a set and bought out the remaining inventory from ASM Vegas, Kardwell, and Caragails. I also bought a set from another member on CT since the chips I bought from the retailers were extremely heavy on $5s.

Sometime later Michael of ASM Vegas made a tribute set with slightly different artwork and Turks & Caicos instead of Trinidad & Tobago. These were offered as a group buy on CT and were also available on the PCOL website. Some new denominations were created as well, and pictures are available in other threads on PCF. The original denominations are $1, $2.5, $5, $25, $100, $500, and $1k. The $1k are extremely rare, and the $500s were hard to come by as well. I’ve heard that only 100 of the $1k were made, although I’m not sure whether or not that count includes the barrel of $1k chips that David from CPC sold a while ago. I’m pretty sure I have a barrel or partial barrel of $500s somewhere and I can’t recall how I came to own them. I only have a single $1k chip that I received as part of a sample set I bought from @PAZ. I understand that CPC will now produce chips using the original artwork, but all of these are original chips produced by ASM during the Jim Blanchard years.

My total set consists of roughly:

$1: 800
$2.5: 400
$5: 1800
$25: 400
$100: 400

Although the lack of a frac could be easily resolved by any number of orders from CPC (plain HHR, hotstamped HHR, inlaid HHR) I never got around to adding a frac. I bought the $2.5 chips as a possible stand in for a quarter, but I didn’t like that option in the end. This made the set impractical for my NL games. I don’t play blackjack, so the set’s enver been used for that. I’ve got other options that I prefer (with $20 value chips) for $2/$4 and $3/$6 limit games and I don’t play $10/$20, $15/$30, or $20/$40 limit. The lack of higher denominations make the set impractical for anything other than maybe a T1 base tournament, and I’ve never hosted a T1 tournament. As a result, the chips have not been put into play. To try to make up for that I brought them out for some farewell photos before I try to find them better homes. Here they are!

With natural lighting:

With flash:

Back to natural light: