Q. David Bowers
Dollars in Casinos
The New York World Telegram, March 25, 1964, printed this article:
Silver Dollar Bucking Big Change:
RENO, Nev., March 25-The little gray-haired lady in a turquoise print dress flitted from one gleaming slot machine to the next in the big gambling casino, plunking in silver dollars.
"I like the clink and the way they feel," she said. "Chips or slugs just wouldn't be the same." Nevada casino operators, facing the possible extinction of the silver dollar, concur.
"It's going to hurt us if we don't get more silver dollars," said Raymond I. (Pappy) Smith, the spry, 76-year-old co-founder of famed Harolds Club in Reno. "It's going to cost this club more than $100,000 a year."
The Treasury's supply of silver dollars, more than 900 million at the start of 1963, has shrunk to fewer than 17 million, and those aren't expected to last long. The House Appropriations Committee has rejected legislation to pay for minting 150 million silver dollars.
Collectors and speculators have gobbled up many of the Treasury's reserve dollars. The silver dollar is a tradition in the daily commerce of some western states. But nowhere do the cartwheels flow in such streams as across Nevada's legal gambling tables and into the gulping silver dollar slot machines.
The lady in the turquoise dress played as many as five machines at once.
"I like the big payoff," she said, after feeding the machines 50 coins in less than three minutes. She got one payoff, butnot a jackpot, in that spurt. Asked how she had made out, she replied: "Oh, I've done real well. I hit the double jackpot on this machine here for $300 and had one jackpot [of $150] here. That makes a total of $450."
The first sound that engulfs a visitor to a big casino is the whirring and clanking of the slot machines. The next is the clink of silver dollars at "21" and dice tables.
The clubs provide $5 and $10 chips for use at the tables, but many gamblers prefer to stay with the silver dollars, even for larger bets.
Who likes silver dollars more, tourists or local folks? Pappy Smith, interviewed in his office, replied firmly, "Everybody. It's human nature. I like a pocketful of silver dollars. It gives me a nice .... I wouldn't say sensation necessarily ... a feeling of security."
Morgan Madness
The following unattributed clipping is dated
March 25, 1964: .
MORGAN MADNESS: All-Night Vigil for Dollars. By Robert V.Leary, Star staff writer.
The Morgan madness raged at the Treasury Department again today. In hopes of acquiring rare silver dollars among the coins named after their designer, George T. Morgan, would-be purchasers began gathering outside the Treasury Building yesterday afternoon. When the doors opened at 9 o'clock this morning, hundreds were waiting.
The new Kennedy half dollars will not be on sale at the Treasury today because the first supply gave out yesterday after two hours. The coins will be available today at some area branch banks, however.
Four college students, with the consent of the crowd, began to enforce some sort of discipline during the long afternoon and night wait of Morgan dollar seekers. They required all arrivals to sign lists, and issued each a pink slip with a place number on it. In the pre-dawn darkness, low-numbered slips were reportedly being sold to late comers for as much as $75.
The front court of the Treasury Building, facing Pennsylvania Avenue, was littered with orange peels, candy wrappers, beer cans and empty bottles. The college students said they conducted a roll call every hour on the hour all night. "If anybody missed two in a row he was out," the students said. It became obvious, minutes after the doors opened, that few of those who waited all night were financially embarrassed.
Two lines had been set up, one to accommodate those wanting $1,000 bags, and the other for those wishing to exchange lesser amounts for $20 rolls of the coins. But only a handful of the all-night waiters were interested in the rolls line.
Richard Oden of 7103 Clarendon Road, Bethesda, exchanged $60, looking for rare coins. That much he could manage, but a bag would have been too much. The $1,000 bags weight 60 pounds, and Richard, 11, weighs only 70. Lloyd Miller, 19, of Brooklyn, N.Y., wheeled a hand truck out of the Treasury Building with six bags he and five other Brooklyn teenagers had purchased.
A Treasury spokesman said the line stalled for a time when two men, seeking $1,000-coin bags, each presented the cashier $1,000 in $1 bills.