The Hall of Fame is the Casino Chips and Gaming Tokens Collectors Club’s highest honor. Each year, several members are considered for inclusion in the Hall of Fame. Members are selected based on their contributions to the hobby and to the Club, which represent exemplary integrity and the greatest impact on the Club and on the hobby as a whole. There is no requirement that any member be selected for the Hall of Fame in any year, but there have been two or three new members each year since the inauguration of the Hall of Fame honor. Following are the current members of the CC&GTCC Hall of Fame.

Archie Black is known as the founder of the Casino Chips and Gaming Tokens Collectors Club. His background was in coins, tokens and medals collecting… having held office in several numismatic organizations on the local, state and regional level. He became involved in collecting gaming material when the first casino, Resorts International, opened in Atlantic City on May 26, 1978.

In 1986-1987, a few chip-collecting friends from around the country were corresponding back and forth with each other. The group promptly grew to a couple dozen “pen pals.” Instead of writing individually to each one of them, Archie began publishing an informal “newsletter” on my word processor to send to all of them at the same time. A suggestion was made that he organize a chip and token collectors club since he had prior experience holding office in several coin and token clubs.

The first organizational meeting was held in Cincinnati, Ohio at the American Numismatic Association’s Annual Convention in 1988, where Black was elected President of the then-small club that has exploded today to more than 2,800 worldwide members. He served CC>CC as founding President for eleven consecutive years, was also the organization’s First Newsletter Editor for several early years and the club’s first Convention Chairman in 1992 and 1993 - held at the old Aladdin Hotel Casino in Las Vegas.

Black is the author of two widely accepted standard reference catalogs, Black’s Catalog of Atlantic City Casino Chips & Gaming Tokens, first published in 1990 and revised each year through 2001. The 1990 Edition was the first fully illustrated chip catalog in the hobby that featured full-color illustrations of chips. In 1999 Black published a companion catalog, also fully illustrated, Black’s Catalog of Puerto Rico Casino Chips. He also runs a new issue service for Atlantic City chips and tokens.

Archie retired in 1996 after 38 years with Bell Atlantic, and lives with his wife Brenda in Brick Township and in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Harvey Fuller was a Los Angeles police officer from 1946 until he retired in 1977. He developed an interest in gaming checks and their history, but it wasn’t until he retired that he had full time to devote to his avocation. Fuller began to travel throughout Nevada, stopping not only in every casino he could find, but coffee shops, diners, barber shops, anywhere that locals gathered and traded stories.

With his investigative training, Harvey listened and steered conversations to old clubs, gaming figures and casino history. His note-taking procedure was unique: he grabbed handfuls of keno tickets with blank backs, and wherever he went he wrote his reminders on the backs of the keno tickets. His research eventually led him to the State’s records, although he found a huge gap from 1948 to 1955, because a fire had destroyed many of the Gaming Control Board’s original records. With persistence and investigation, Fuller did his best to fill in those gaps.

Through Howard Herz, Harvey’s Resort in Lake Tahoe became interested in Fuller’s notes and research, and purchased boxes full of his keno tickets, matchbooks, slips of paper, all of which comprised the research he’d been conducting for years. In 1991, with the assistance of Editor Howard Herz, Harvey J. Fuller’s Index of Nevada Gambling Establishments was published. To this day, Fuller’s Index stands as a primary research source for anyone interested in Nevada gaming history.

In the late 1990’s, Doug Saito persuaded Fuller to talk to him in detail about his research, recollections, and experiences in traveling throughout Nevada and talking with old-timers about their memories. Saito occasionally publishes bits of his conversations with Fuller in his magazine, Chip Chat. Those who have attended CC>CC conventions will remember seeing Harvey Fuller with his omnipresent cigarette, always deeply involved in conversation with a seasoned collector, and always telling stories about his original and valuable investigations.

Howard Herz began collecting gaming tokens and gaming checks As a teenager, in his capacity as curator of coins for Harvey's Resort Hotel. In 1964 he began to form Harvey's collection of both gaming checks and gaming tokens that had replaced silver dollars on the tables. In 1967 he traveled around Nevada visiting more than 200 gaming licensees. The travels resulted in a display at the 1967 convention of the American Numismatic Association - the first time gaming checks and tokens were introduced to a national collecting audience.

Following the convention, the displays were mounted on the walls of Harvey's Resort Hotel. Over the years Howard and Harvey's continued to collect both checks and tokens. In the 1970's, Harvey's supported gaming research by a retired Los Angeles police detective by the name of Harvey Fuller. In 1983, following the death of Harvey Gross, Howard was required by the accounting department to formally catalog Harvey's collection.

The research required to adequately describe the collection led to the publication of the first book devoted solely to casino chips: Harvey's Guide to Collecting Gaming Checks and Chips in 1984. In 1995 Howard published The Collector's Guide to Nevada Gaming Checks and Chips. Since the publication of his Nevada guide, Howard has continued to publish books on checks, tokens and silver strikes, as well as conducting mail auctions from time to time. His auction catalogs (including the annual Club auction catalog) have been significant sources of gaming history.

Howard, his wife Kregg and daughter Marce live in Minden, Nevada where Howard continues his gaming history research through his company, Gaming Archæology.

Phil Jensen began collecting coins as a young boy in Wisconsin in 1953 when his father gave him six rolls of Indian head pennies and a folder to put them in. For much of the 1950’s, Phil spent Friday nights searching through rolls of coins bought at the local bank. He’d been bitten by the collecting bug!

After a four-year stint at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Phil moved to Lake Tahoe in 1966 where he became fascinated by the 300-piece casino chip collection on display at Harvey’s.

For the next fifteen years, Phil traveled Nevada, collecting current and obsolete chips and the stories that went with them. Recently, he has been documenting those travels, chips and stories in articles in Casino Chip and Token News.

Phil has been a casino dealer for 36 years, and currently lives in Las Vegas.

Michael Knapp was one of the Club’s organizers, Charter Member 007, and was its first Secretary, a position he held from the inception of the Club until 1999. He was co-chairman of the first Club convention in 1993 with Archie Black, was the Club’s Educational Chairman from 1993 until 2001, organizing all the seminars at the conventions during that period. He currently serves as Chairman of the Committee on Standards and Archives. In 2002, he was awarded an honorary life membership for his contributions to the Club over the years.

Michael has written many articles for Casino Chip and Token News, including a regular column which ran for several years, called “The Information Booth.” He wrote the “Knapp on Books” column for the Chequers web magazine, and now writes the same column for the Club magazine. Michael has also written articles about chip collecting for a number of other non-Club publications. He was a pioneer in electronic chipping, arranging for a regular meeting place for chip collectors on the original Prodigy service. For a number of years ran the first live online auctions of casino chips, tokens and memorabilia in which a substantial number of Club members participated live, from coast to coast, before the Internet was readily accessible.

Knapp has a large collection of casino chips, gaming memorabilia, ivories and mother-of-pearl chips. His passion for the history behind the chips has also helped him build one of the most complete libraries of books about gambling, gaming figures, and casino history.

He is one of the co-authors, with Allan Myers and Ernie Wheelden, of The Chip Rack and The Gaming Table, which have become standard reference works for the hobby. Michael lives in Columbus, Ohio, and plans to move to the Flathead Valley, Montana, within the next two years.

Bruce Landau was one of the initial organizers of CC&GTCC, becoming Charter Member #002 and the founding Treasurer. He was an early collector of casino chips and tokens, starting on a small scale in the early 70's and expanding his collection substantially in the late 70's. He concentrated almost exclusively on Nevada chips and he was fortunate enough to make many trips to Las Vegas on business, helping to feed his hobby.

Following his term as Treasurer, Landau took on the responsibility of chairing the annual auctions when the Club began conducting them at each annual convention. His efforts, combined with those of the numerous volunteers who assisted in the auctions, resulted in the single largest money-making event for the Club each year. The annual auction has been named after Bruce in recognition of his organizational talents and as a memorial to his contributions to the hobby. He was also, after his own induction, Chairman of the Hall of Fame committee.

In 1996 Landau received an offer he couldn't refuse, and sold his entire collection. Typically, however, he immediately started collecting again, concentrating on Nevada but only on specific denominations.

There were few people in the hobby who did not know and like Bruce Landau. He was always optimistic and upbeat, and was always able to provide understanding companionship for established collectors and advice for new ones. His wife Eileen was always by his side and always helping with whatever Bruce chose to do.

Bruce Landau passed away December 19, 2002.

Bob Mera was an avid blackjack player who eventually became a dealer in several Atlantic City casinos. It was as a dealer that he developed his love for casino chips. In the early 1990's, Bob began selling casino chips and related items from a pushcart at the Boardwalk One mall near Caesars Atlantic City. Soon he opened a retail shop in the mall and called it the "Gaming Emporium."

Mera's shop became the unofficial headquarters for chipping activity in Atlantic City, with many club members stopping in whenever they were in the area. As a result of his enthusiasm for the hobby and his unique exposure in the mall, Bob became the top recruiter of new members for CC>CC for an unprecedented five years in a row: 1990 through 1994.

In 1995, Mera became the driving force behind the formation of the Atlantic City Chapter of CC>CC, one of the Club's first chapters. He is credited with having recruited a majority of the members of the 350-member chapter.

Mera passed away in 1999, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame posthumously.

Allan Myers has been collecting chips longer than most members of the Club. His collections of ivory, mother-of-pearl, clay poker chips, and casino chips, as well as antique gambling and cheating devices, are among the most extensive known.

His experience and search for further information about chips and their history initially led to his contributions to Dale Seymour’s Antique Gambling Chips. Allan has written articles for Casino Chip and Token News, and is well known among the collecting hobby because of the assistance he’s provided to new collectors and his constant willingness to share whatever information he has been able to obtain.

Myers is one of the co-authors, along with Michael Knapp and Ernie Wheelden, of The Chip Rack and The Gaming Table, two standard reference works for chip collectors.

Allan and his wife Diane live in Louisville, Kentucky.

Janice O’Neal is one of the founding members of CC&GTCC, with Charter Membership number 008. She was the Club’s Historian from 1989 through 1990, when the Bylaws were amended to create the position of Vice President, to which she was elected. For several years, Janice’s “Nevada Update” column in the Club magazine was the main source of new issue information for most members.

When Tribal casinos and riverboats began to open in the Midwest, O’Neal was positioned to keep track of them, and that she did. At the time, she and her husband Jerry lived in the Detroit area, and they traveled to virtually all the Tribal casinos in the upper Midwest. Not only did she keep members informed through the Club magazine, but she amassed what is perhaps the most extensive and complete collections of Tribal chips known. Her riverboat collection is also one of the largest.

O’Neal’s love of the history of casinos and their chips has stimulated her to collect information no matter where she goes, and her notebooks of data are extensive. She has – without much credit – contributed history notes for more than one book about casino memorabilia.

Janice and Jerry currently live in Las Vegas, to which they retired several years ago.

Doug Saito is one of the best-known chip collectors and dealers in the Club. His thirst for knowledge about the history behind the “little colored pieces of clay” we collect has led him to conduct original and unique research, which often finds him talking to owners of clubs long gone from the Nevada and California gambling scenes.

Saito’s collection of stories about those figures, the old clubs, and the old chips they used, eventually find their way into Chip Chat, the irregularly-published magazine that Doug writes, and to which many collectors subscribe. His sense of humor and eye (and ear) for detail make the magazine and the stories always fun to hear.

Doug has written articles for the Club magazine and has served as a panelist for annual convention educational seminars. He has conducted his own casino chip auctions, and has packed his auction catalogs with the same kinds of stories and detail found in Chip Chat.

Doug lives in San Diego, California.

Dale Seymour is an educator and publisher of education materials. He liked to play black jack and to collect things, and began collecting chips in 1970. He would go to flea markets frequently to pick up old, inexpensive game pieces (spinners, dice, pawns, etc.) to help in designing games for the classroom to teach math concepts. Seymour began to wonder when the pieces were made, who made them, whether there were more different designs, and if so, how many.

Seymour’s interests centered around old poker chips, especially ivory and mother-of-pearl chips, of which he has what is likely the most extensive known collection. He has also collected virtually every type of gaming chip, including tokens, spielmarks, Siamese ceramic pieces, and old vintage casino chips.

His academic curiosity led Dale to the conclusion that if the chips could talk, they would have fascinating stories to tell. Ultimately, after advertising in Antique Trader and receiving numerous responses, he realized that there was a need for more information on these, so the idea of putting together a book for collectors was hatched. It took many years and thousands of hours to put together the first edition of his book, Antique Gambling Chips, now recognized as the first book ever published, solely devoted to collecting gaming chips. The book is now in its second edition.

Dale, who is now retired, lives with his wife in northern California.

Greg Susong is one of those who brought the Internet to chip and token collecting. His website, ChipGuide.com, was the first site devoted entirely to chip and token collecting, and serves as a tremendous resource for chip collectors throughout the world. The Chip Board, the message bulletin board Greg created as part of his site, is the primary location for posts from chip collectors and those who wish to know about the hobby.

Susong has written articles for the Club magazine, has served as a panelist on annual convention educational programs. He currently serves as the Club’s Webmaster, maintaining the Club’s website as well as his own. Greg is the author of An Illustrated Guide to the Casino Chips of American Riverboats.

Greg and his family live in South Central Kansas.

Ernie Wheelden has collected chips and gaming memorabilia for many years. Living in southern California, his involvement with the large California contingent of chip collectors and dealers is extensive. Similarly, his location has enabled him to be present at far more chip shows and flea markets where chips have been available than is the case in most other parts of the country.

His interest in what lay behind the chips themselves got Wheelden involved in researching the casinos that issued them. Eventually he began exchanging information with Michael Knapp, who was at the time writing his column “The Information Booth” for the Club magazine, and with Allan Myers. Wheelden suggested that they pool their information. That correspondence led to the formation of KMW Publishing Company, and the two books that Wheelden, Myers and Knapp have published: The Gaming Table and The Chip Rack. Both books have become standard reference works for the hobby.

Ernie and Jeanine Wheelden live in southern California.