King and Queen of Chips

"Tell me when you get bored. I could talk about this stuff for hours," he said.

Mike Spinetti knows a lot about poker. He can tell you the probability of aces beating kings, how to read people, and where to find the best tournaments in town. But he can also tell you the history of the casino you're playing in, the table you're playing on, the cards you're playing with, and the chips you are shuffling. Talking for hours is an understatement. Spinetti is a history buff. He could talk for days about the provenance of gambling in Nevada. Then, he could lecture for another week in regard to his collection of gambling-related items. Get bored? Not a chance. This is how history should have been taught in high school.

Spinetti's love of poker began at an early age. Stricken with a form of polio at the age of 5, little Mike was unable to run and play with other children. Luckily, he had something to keep him occupied. His grandmother, a former showgirl, entertained him by playing deuces wild and draw poker with him. Before most kids had mastered riding a bike, Spinetti was learning the finer points of poker, a lifelong hobby that continues today.

In between playing poker and collecting gambling memorabilia, he managed to have a successful career. In 1966, he began working for Honda. Several years later, he was the owner of three Honda dealerships, while simultaneously acting as city councilman and mayor of his hometown, Jackson, California. Incidentally, Jackson was the last city in California to have legal gambling. Local antiques shops were overrun with mementos of casinos, giving Spinetti access to many objects for his collection. In 1988, after 16 years of city leadership, Mayor Spinetti opted not to run for re-election. He also put his Honda dealerships up for sale, and decided to marry his longtime girlfriend, Anne. The busiest man in Jackson, an admitted Type-A personality, wanted to slow down his hectic lifestyle and move toward retirement.

In the midst of traveling with his wife, going on poker cruises, and shopping for gambling collectibles, he and some friends started a bank geared to businessmen in the Sacramento area. This little venture quickly grew to a bank with 13 branches. After the sale of his banks, Mike and Anne decided to move to Las Vegas, where he had had a vacation home since 1980. "We realized that we were spending the majority of the year in Vegas, and were going home every six weeks for just a few days for upkeep of our house," said Spinetti.

Five years ago, the Spinettis made Las Vegas their permanent home, and it looks like they aren't going anywhere. "I packed up his whole collection of chips and things when we moved from Sacramento, and now that it's here, we're never moving again," said Anne.

The Spinettis live in a big, beautiful house in Las Vegas. It has an incredible view of the Strip from the upper floor, but more importantly, it has a sizable basement in which to house his impressive collection of gambling memorabilia. There are poker and craps tables, a roulette wheel, and thousands of other items from casinos past and present, including matchbooks, cards, slot cups, ashtrays, and show posters. All of these treasures are displayed in lighted glass cases, but Spinetti will gladly remove any object from its case and tell its story. He is most proud of his collection of poker chips and their traveling cases. He has ivory chips dating back to riverboat gambling days, as well as a plethora of chips from Las Vegas casinos that are no longer operating, his favorite being a chip from the opening of the Flamingo. The $5 chip was used by then-owner Bugsy Siegel. Spinetti purchased the chip from an estate about 10 years ago, and it is one of five known to be in existence. "There are so few of these chips that it would be nearly impossible to calculate its value," stated Spinetti. "A $5 chip from the Sands, which opened a few years after the Flamingo, just sold on Ebay for $33,000." Another favorite is a traveling game case that holds cards and chips. Spinetti found it in an antiques shop in Chicago, and was surprised to find that the hand-inlaid case was made of one seamless piece of carved wood. Also in the collection is a layout of cards detailing the game of faro, which was the poker game of choice for riverboat gamblers from the late 1800s through the 1940s. "If you watch the movie Tombstone, it was based around faro," Spinetti explained. "Binion's Horseshoe actually had faro games, as did the Golden Nugget and the Mint, through the 1950s." His newest acquisition is a hand-etched ivory chip from the 1860s with a face value of $100. With the help of a friend who has written books on antique chips, he was able to trace its provenance to faro games played in saloons in the San Francisco area. Ivory chips were no longer produced after 1875, when clay was found to be a less labor-intensive material for chip-making. This chip, like his Flamingo chip, is one of five ivories of $100 denomination known to be in existence. He explains that two of these chips would have bought a good-sized lot in Downtown Las Vegas in its inception, considering that a place on Fremont Street was going for $200 in the early 1900s.

Spinetti is the owner and namesake of a local company, Spinetti's, that sells poker chips, among other things. While most of the population grinds out a living doing jobs they can barely tolerate, Spinetti has turned his hobby into a rewarding and lucrative enterprise.

Remember the other times he tried to retire but couldn't quite do it? This is a bit of the same old story. After moving to Las Vegas, he found himself with a lot of time on his hands. Hoping to find something to keep himself occupied for a few hours a week, Spinetti started putting together chip collections, mainly for friends who wanted a good set of chips for their home games. Demand increased, and he found himself running low on the clay chips he had accumulated over 30 years. Chips had to be imported from overseas to meet orders. Three years ago, the company sent out four or five sets of chips per day, but as televised poker grew more prevalent, so did the chip business. "With what's happening in poker tournaments and television, we're seeing the same growth in relation to the whole industry," said Spinetti. The company now employs two shifts of workers per day, seven days a week. The workers assemble a customized set of chips in a case as fast as the orders come in, and every day, 50,000 chips, or about 90 sets, are shipped out to consumers. "Ladies call and order a set of chips in pink, orange, and yellow, and their boyfriends exchange them the next day for red, white, and blue," laughed Spinetti.

The company also lists about 300 sets of chips per day on Ebay auctions. They start the bidding at 80 cents, but usually make a healthy return. "We literally gamble with every auction we sell. We just hope to get enough to pay for it, but it works," he stated.

Another popular item on Spinetti's site is a set of cards – not just a pack of cards, but a shipment of 100 decks of used cards from Las Vegas casinos. These sell for $50, and he estimates that they will go through about nine million decks this year. The site also offers felt tabletops, dealer buttons, cut cards, card shufflers, and just about anything one would need for a home tournament.

Once again, Spinetti's attempt at retirement didn't work out. "I didn't plan on this, but we went with it," he said. "I'm not complaining, as I enjoy being busy. And we have fun with this. It's a lot more fun if you don't think of it as work."

Editor's note: Go to the CardPlayer Online Store at www.cardplayer.com and click on "Poker Chips" for more information about Spinetti's or to order products.