Today we will look at the first of three tokens from Imperial Palace, which originally opened in 1959 as the 180-room Flamingo Capri motel, located adjacent to the Flamingo hotel and casino. Ralph Engelstad purchased the property in 1971, and added a casino the following year. In 1977, the hotel had 650 rooms, after the completion of its Imperial Palace Tower. The resort was later reopened as the Asian-themed Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino on November 1,1979.
This place used to be my hang. In the mid 90s I lived in Southern California, about 4 hours from Las Vegas and a few friends and I used to go to Vegas on the regular.
I had a swing shift job so I would get off around 11pm on Friday and we would high tail it out of town. We would get to Vegas around 3am and hit the tables at Imperial Palace. We would gamble, drink and eat until the pool would open then go out and sleep on the lounge chairs at the pool for a couple hours.
After we woke up and had some breakfast (usually at lunchtime) we would go to the desk and rent a room for the night,BOOM, two nights for the price of one.
This token is in fine shape and has a really cool looking eagle on it.
These tokens have a tasty 0.60ozt silver center surrounded by a ring of brass. When I take them out of the airtite to photograph them I can hear the center piece rattle around inside that brass.
All the tokens I will be showing are a $10 value at the casino cage but they sell for well over $20 on the open market. I wonder if folks actually cashed these in for a crisp 10 dollar bill at the casino?
