Retired truck driver Mark Trester has spent decades collecting casino memorabilia — everything from decorative ashtrays to security badges.
He took on a new role at the 33rd annual Casino Chip and Collectibles Show on Saturday: selling pieces of his collection for the first time.
The three-day event, held at South Point and hosted by the Casino Collectibles Association, drew thousands of attendees and about 100 vendors, according to organizers.
Trester said his interest began after seeing a casino chip from the Landmark — which was imploded in 1995 — sell for $90.
“I told myself that every time I played somewhere, I’d keep one chip,” he said. “Then it morphed into this.”
Attendees browsed his table, which featured dozens of gaming tokens and decks of cards, some with holes punched through the middle and others in boxes with yellowing edges from now-closed properties like the Silver City Casino.
The price of his casino chips ranged from $5 to hundreds of dollars. Some patches were on sale for $15, while ashtrays embellished with casino logos were about $7.
“It’s the end of the show,” Trester told one passerby, grinning. “It’s wheeling and dealing time.”
Trester was also joined by his son, Matthew Trester, who works in surveillance for Caesars Entertainment properties but does not collect memorabilia.
“My dad loves Las Vegas — he loves gambling — but he’s never worked at a casino,” Matthew Trester said. “We’re opposites like that.”
Despite their differences, both said their favorite part of the show was hearing stories from attendees, including former casino workers reflecting on their days at now-defunct properties.
‘Trying to preserve history’
Meanwhile, Rick Kihara browsed one of the convention’s educational exhibits — a display case featuring pamphlets advertising 20th century performances from celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald and George Burns.
Kihara said he was at the South Point, heard about the event, and decided to stop by.
“I guess I should have kept some casino chips, all these years,” Kihara joked.
Casino Collectibles Association President Barry Sherwood said the club has nearly 1,000 members, many of them former casino staff and executives. They are a part of the casino history the group aims to preserve, he said.
He added that while much of the membership is older, he noticed an increase in younger attendees at this year’s convention.
“You have collectors that can tell you, oh, this is where Bugsy did this, and Frank Sinatra did that,” Sherwood said. “So we’re trying to preserve that history — that’s the old culture — because people of the younger generation are not collectors of anything.”
Sherwood emphasized the importance of younger generations carrying the casino collectibles hobby forward, even though many casinos have replaced traditional slot tokens with ticket-in, ticket-out systems.
“We’re all going to die, and we need this to keep going,” he said.
Similarly, vendor Westen Charles, of Miami, said the casino collectibles hobby, which he called undervalued, is still in its infancy.
“Take Pokémon cards; they just print them, and then they’re worth $40,000 because they do a rare one,” Charles said. “But these chips are intricate and unique with beautiful artwork — like, the Vegas stuff is completely American and mid-century.”
He added: “You can’t get any more campy than that.”
Contact Akiya Dillon at adillon@reviewjournal.com.
