My Father-in-Law was in the US Navy. He traveled the world and has lots of stories. He recently handed down to me some of his coins. He still has lots of coins he is holding onto but I have a feeling the small group of coins he gave me had purpose. He is still in his 60's and good health so it's not that he has to rush and distribute all of his coins as he would want. He has stories about each coin that he gave me. This is one of the stories.
His Navy career was pretty much war free, so his stories are usually around bad food, horrible weather storms and guitar stories. He is a avid guitar player and music historian, I'm sure in the hours and hours of downtime he was playing his guitar. He is really good, not the greatest singer though :) Im sure there are lots of wild stories of sailors visiting various cities around the world. However this one is PG and involves a celebrity. He was with a few of his sailor buddies, all dressed in uniform, at the Monte Carlo in France. Every dollar that military men had was valuable in those days, the budget was tight. While sitting at one of the tables they noticed Sammy Davis Jr sitting at a table not far from them. These are tatted up sailors, not Justin Bieber fans so they just kept doing their thing and not running up for any autographs. After a while (and I'm sure a few drinks), they were not even thinking of Sammy. This is when they heard his voice behind them as he was walking past them. He looked over at the uniformed sailors and started walking towards them. He reached into his side pockets and threw a bunch of gambling chips on the table and said something cool "Have some fun on me boys". My Father-in-law kept 2 of the chips until the day that he handed them to me. He wanted me to know the story and to pass this down to my kids ... these are grandpa's chips that Sammy Davis Jr gave him. They'll have to google who that is, but I think that is exactly what he wants them to do.
There are other sons-in-law but I'm the only coin collector and I have lots of stories about the coins I have so I think he knows I will pass along the story and not sell these chips. Plus I looked them up and they're only worth like $10 ... LOL. But honestly I think even at a few hundred dollars each, I would always keep them. I have lots of coins that have meaning that I will never sell so I added these 2 chips in that collection.
It's not the best story in the history of the world, but it shows that even when the cameras are not on ... Sammy Davis Jr is still a cool Mother F.....
Cheers
