In 1965, the first year, 28 Nevada casinos, located in Lake Tahoe, Reno, Carson City, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Boulder City, purchased customized dollar tokens. Master sculptor-engraver Gilroy Roberts, responsible for the appearance of the Kennedy half-dollarfor one, created the look of most, if not all, of them.
For the first two years at least, only The Franklin Mint in Pennsylvania, owned and operated by the Numismatics Corporation, designed and manufactured The Silver State’s dollar tokens. “One Las Vegas casino executive said the inventory of the first order was depleted by 20,000 tokens so fast that a reorder was placed immediately.”īy Nevada regulation, all gambling houses had to have their own dollar token design, and they opted to change it, in some way, annually. Treasury and Silver State approval in July 1965, “countless thousands of the tokens have been taken out of circulation,” reported the Las Vegas Sun in May 1966. Since the change went into effect following U.S. People around the world wanted to collect the new pseudo-money.
When Nevada’s casinos switched the form of currency accepted in their $1 slot machines to a token from the nearly extinct silver coin in 1965, it had an unexpected result. One Thunder Buck, Thunderbird, Las Vegas, NV
