Every now and then, a once-popular product from the past that almost disappeared makes a strong comeback. The rebirth of vinyl and the audio turntable is a good example. Years after you probably gave away your entire collection of albums, or sold it for pennies on the dollar, vinyl is suddenly hot again. Those old LPs are now fetching big money at garage sales and in the independent record stores that are suddenly making a comeback nationwide. While there was a small segment of dedicated fans
An early dual hopper Silver Strike machine.
that kept the art alive, records and turntables virtually disappeared by the turn of the century, except for those dedicated DJs that maintained a fidelity to analog and would still drag crates of records to their club gigs at a time when most DJs had shifted over to the Macbook and the hard drive. But now, they are back and once again considered a must-have for audiophiles. Sales hit the $98 million mark in the US last year, with over fourteen million units sold. Those are impressive numbers considering that Pandora, iTunes and Spotify are still booming. Comic books are another craze that have made a strong comeback recently, although they are in a slight decline since their $1B-plus sales peak in 2016.
There are not many examples in gaming. Wouldn’t it be great if we could see a return of 3/2 Blackjack, free parking and no resort fees on the Strip? Don’t hold your breath on any one of those happening soon. A safer bet, perhaps, would be the return of Silver Strike slot machines. After nearly going extinct, they may be poised for a comeback.
In case you’re not familiar with this game, the basic model was an IGT 25¢ reel-spinning game with a bonus feature that dispensed a $10 specialty token in a plastic capsule. At its peak, there were probably 250+ of the games distributed nationwide. While that doesn’t seem like many, it created a fan base that remains active today, even though the machines themselves had virtually disappeared by the early 2000s. The one place they remained, and are still going strong, is the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas.
The Four Queens has three machines in a similar standalone
“Gambler” format as well as a back-to-back bank of six.
Slot Director Shaun Webster joined Four Queens in 2003, when there was just one machine remaining at the location. That was when a member of the Silver Strikers Club (more about them later) approached him about doing a slot tournament for their group. Apparently, the Union Plaza had been doing these events but was beginning to remove their Silver Strike machines. Webster was intrigued and started up a tradition of two annual tournaments. As they became more and more popular, Webster created four new Silver Strike token designs each year. They are still going strong today, with tournaments in January and June and new-release tokens for St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween.
Webster’s designs have become extremely desirable. He creates one in the original .999 fine silver, known as a Red Cap since it is housed in a capsule with a red-colored cover. It contains ½ ounce of silver surrounded by a brass ring. A similar non-silver, but colorized, version is called the Blue Cap. The most common token, the Clear, is dispensed in a clear plastic capsule. The Clear is the same size and shape as the others with the same $10 face value but is just silver-plated (or clad) in the center, with the same brass outer ring. Webster has also minted a limited edition of 3.5” diameter $300 versions that players can trade for 30 of the clear tokens during special events at the Four Queens. These special editions are snapped up in minutes.
The history of these Silver Strike machines is interesting. Many credit Anchor Coin’s Randy Adams with the origination, but the history goes back a bit further, to Fitzgeralds in Reno. GM Terry Oliver and slot director Dave Fendrick (now the GM at River Rock Casino in the Napa area) were looking for a way to dispense pure silver dollars and/or specialty silver tokens for their players. They originally presented them in blue velvet jewelry boxes but were looking to automate the process. They called in AAncient Slots’ salesman Nick Greenwood and technician Jesse Pierce. Pierce had previously been a slot tech at Fitzgeralds before joining Greenwood at AAncient. He is a tinkerer at heart and recalled seeing a demo of a small hopper from Asahi Seiko. Pierce realized he could fit two of them in a single game and set about designing a circuit to activate them individually. He finished his first prototype for an IGT S-Slot about the same time that IGT added bill validators to their machines. The placement of the validators left no room for his two hoppers. This forced him to use a Sigma machine for the first games. Greenwood placed the first Silver Strike machine at Harvey’s in Lake Tahoe. Soon after, they placed another one in Fitzgeralds. The early model dispensed solid silver $7 coins. When Randy Adams joined the team, he became a strong advocate of Silver Strikes and oversaw many improvements as AAncient transitioned to (or was acquired by) Global Gaming, then Anchor Gaming, and finally to IGT.
In its most successful mode, the machine was built on an S2000 IGT game with a round tombstone top that served as the token dispenser (see photos). The product was marketed on a participation basis. Anchor/IGT supplied the machine for a fee of between $35 and $50 per day. Operators had to shell out nearly $1,000 each for coin die – the mold used to stamp out the tokens – and pay IGT $8 each for the tokens. While that may seem steep, the advantage was that the pay table was constructed for the $10 face value, but 80% or more of them went home as souvenirs, never to be redeemed at the Cage. That meant $2 in additional profit per token dispensed for the casino operator whenever the finance department squared up the books. Webster estimates that 98% of the tokens he produces today at the Four Queens are never redeemed.
One of the very first Silver Strike tokens, a solid silver $7 design from Fitzgeralds (left), sits alongside the latter $10 and $200 variants by various casinos.
The machines were a hit almost immediately. Depending on the coin design, games did from two to six times the house average. The key to strong performance was the token design: properties that simply used a logo and an ad-like image didn’t do as well. But other series, like the Luciano Pavarotti token from the Eldorado Reno or the one depicting the chorus girls at Las Vegas’ Flamingo, were huge hits.
So if these games were so popular and did so well, why did they almost disappear? The speculation is that IGT acquired Anchor mainly for patents (like the Wheel of Gold, which helped IGT develop their own Wheel of Fortune). However, they never really showed much enthusiasm for Anchor’s route business, with specialty games like the Totem Pole and Silver Strike. It would be generous to say they did not wholeheartedly support these legacy Anchor games.
In addition, there were frequent complaints of hopper jams and poor service, and some griping about IGT’s profit on the coins. Early on, with their interest in the Global Mint, IGT could produce the tokens for just a few dollars while charging $8 to the casinos. They also made additional profit on the dies and artwork. Fortunately for them, they had strong patent and trademark protections that meant no one else could undercut these prices.
One complaint went away quickly as the price of silver skyrocketed. The metal was about $4/oz when Pierce and his team began producing their one-ounce prototypes with the $7 face value. During Silver Strike’s heyday, the price of silver soared to as much as $50/oz. Just like the US Mint, IGT could no longer offer solid silver coins. The first move was to a brass ring design with just a half-ounce silver center (which did nothing to hurt their desirability). As the price of silver continued to climb, they eventually dropped all the .999 fine versions and went to silver plated or clad coins just like the government. But many think IGT just wanted out of the route business completely and didn’t discourage customers from trading their Silver Strike games for Wheel of Fortune or other more profitable participation games.
The mint that IGT used most often was operated by Sean Sarr. He has since sold that operation to Sunshine Mint in Idaho, but he continues to work for them. Sarr had always been a strong believer in Silver Strike, ever since Randy Adams helped him financially to move his first Landmark Mint, located in Lancaster, CA, to Las Vegas and to rebrand it as Global Mint to align with Global Gaming. Over the years, 29 different mints produced Silver Strike tokens, from Franklin to Green Duck; today, Sunshine Mint is the sole producer of these tokens.
The Four Queens, led by slot director Shaun Webster, is the home of nine of the remaining 15 “Silver Strike” machines. Until more machines are placed, it is virtual holy ground for the country’s 450+ collectors of these specialty tokens.
Like Webster, Sarr strongly believed in Silver Strikes even as they were disappearing. When IGT officially abandoned the games, he convinced Sunshine to buy the trademark. Together, they are now working to revive the machines. The original inventor, Jesse Pierce, now operates JP Slots in Las Vegas. He, too, still loves the games, enough so that he acquired the bill of materials from IGT and signed a licensing agreement with Sunshine Mint to start making ersatz new ones again. They are on refurbished S2000s with new top turret dispensers. Pierce recently re-did a few of the original games, which are to be placed at the Carson Valley Inn in Minden, NV, and there’s a pending contract at the Route 66 Casino in New Mexico. That has got the Silver Strikers Club excited.
Jeff Bitzer is the president of the club. He says they have a consistent membership roster of roughly 450 avid players and collectors. He adds, “We lose about a dozen members each year, but (we) gain about the same numbers of new signups.” Until recently, their only highlight was the Four Queens events. Now, they’re excited about the introduction of new machines and tokens. Gaming veteran Denny Garcia, Pierce’s main salesman, is an enthusiastic cheerleader.
“When can you put a machine on your floor that comes with a fan club of hundreds of followers willing to drive across the country to play your game,” he asks, “how can it get better than that?”
Interestingly, on eBay you can probably buy each of the over 4,000 tokens that were originally produced. Most sell for $15 to $25, but some go for a lot more. An O’Shea’s Donkey & Elephant $10 design is listed for $240. Bitzer said that a rare Caesars Palace $200 design went for $17,500 a few years ago. Webster’s personal favorite is an early Marilyn Monroe depiction.
The club members seem to really like Webster’s new Four Queens designs. He salts the popular Red Cap and Blue Cap versions within the vertical stacks of clear tokens in the top turrets. He says most players are fair and patient when waiting to win one of the more desirable designs. The Blue Caps still feature the brass outer ring, but now use a laser process that engraves beautiful four-color images from American flags to classic railroad steam engines in the centers.
You can join and keep up with club news and notes on new and old tokens at https://silverstrikers.com. Interestingly, their annual dues are the same as the standard token’s face value: $10. What Bitzer and other club members really want neatly aligns with the goals of Sarr, Pierce and Garcia: more machines in more casinos.
One of the newer generations of the Silver Strike built on a late-model IGT S-2000
with the turret token dispenser. The tokens are stacked vertically in rotating columns
in the center section of this top box.
It may happen. The units are a much better deal for operators today than they were in the past. Garcia says, “they are nearly risk free.” Indeed, the games are provided for free (in other words, no daily fees.) The tokens now wholesale for $7.50 each, giving the casino operators an additional 50¢ in profit for each non-redeemed token ($2.50 total). There are also no die or design fees anymore, if the casino buys at least 1,000 tokens. Webster goes through that many in a month or two.
Maintenance on the base S2000 is the casino’s responsibility. Dynasty Gaming, out of Las Vegas and Reno, takes care of keeping the token turret working. Dynasty is the third partner in this re-birth of Silver Strike, along with Sunshine Mint and JP Slots. Dynasty is licensed for machine distribution across the US, and they have a large inventory of refurbished S2000 IGT games that look like new in their warehouses.
Will Silver Strike work again nationwide? Shaun Webster thinks so. “It’s a no brainer,” he said, “Even if I wasn’t at the Four Queens, I’d put Silver Strike on my floor in New York, Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida or California. People everywhere still love ‘em.”
Contacts mentioned above:
Jeff Bitzer, Silver Strikers Club – president@silverstrikers.com
Shaun Webster, Four Queens – www.fourqueens.com
Sean Sarr – Sunshine Mint – ssarr@sunshinemint.com
JP Slots (Denny Garcia) – DGarcia@dag-abg.com
Jody Rosta, Dynasty Games Sales – jrosta@dynastygamesnv.com
Carson Valley Inn – www.CarsonValleyInn.com
