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Tony Spilotro used this casino's poker room as his office - up to fourteen hours a day, with his calls routed to the table. In 1975 the State of Nevada ordered the Dunes to keep him out of it.
The Dunes opened on 23 May 1955 and went dark inside eight months. What brought it back was money: $4 million from the Teamsters pension fund in 1958, $5 million more for the tower in 1965, and a roster of owners drawn from the St. Louis and New England rackets. Raymond Patriarca held a quarter interest through a front man. Morris Shenker - Jimmy Hoffa's own attorney - took control in the 1970s.
In December 1971 six Dunes officials were indicted for skimming the tables. All pleaded not guilty.
And from 1969 the biggest poker game in Las Vegas was dealt here. Sid Wyman moved it over from the Golden Nugget and it stayed for a decade. Nevada eventually wrote a regulation barring casino bosses from playing in their own houses, because of him.
WHAT 1983 MEANT AT THIS CASINO
By 1983 Shenker's Dunes was in its last years, still under the ownership that had drawn four crime families to it, and still dealing the card room that Nevada had tried to keep Spilotro out of.
For a playing-card collector this is the most on-theme property on the Strip: a deck from the casino that held the city's biggest poker game, in the years it held it.
THE RECORD
* Opened 23 May 1955; the casino went dark within eight months.
* 10 January 1957: Minsky's Follies, the first topless show in Las Vegas.
* Teamsters pension money: $4 million in 1958, $5 million for the 1965 tower.
* December 1971: six Dunes officials indicted for skimming; all pleaded not guilty.
* 1975: Nevada ordered the Dunes to keep Tony Spilotro out of its poker room.
* 1969-1978: the biggest poker game in Las Vegas was dealt here.
The Dunes closed on 26 January 1993 and was imploded that October in front of 200,000 people, staged as the opening act for Treasure Island across the street. The Bellagio stands there now.
ABOUT THE DECK
Manufacturer: The United States Playing Card Company, Cincinnati - the maker that supplied most of the Las Vegas houses through this period.
Year: 1983, and that is not an estimate. USPCC stamped a production code on the Ace of Spades. Read against this casino's logo variant and the design of its box seal, that code resolves to a single year. Two independent methods, one answer. Almost every other vintage casino deck you will find is sold as "1970s" or "vintage" because the seller never checked.
Please see the photographs. They show the actual deck you will receive.
THE INFORMATION PANELS
Two of the images in this listing are research panels I produced for this casino: its history and the people who ran it, and the full ownership chain with the federal and regulatory record beside it. They are readable at full size. Everything on them is sourced; where a claim is reported rather than proven, it is worded that way.
WHY THERE WILL NEVER BE MORE
Nobody is printing 1983 stock for this house. The presses that made these stopped, the men who ordered them are dead, and the era that produced them was taken apart by the federal government. Every one of these decks that got played with, thrown out or lost is gone for good. What is left is all there is.
Packed and shipped so that damage is not possible.
I have other casinos and other years from this same era listed - worth a look if you are building a set rather than buying a single deck.
Questions welcome. If you want to know something specific about the history of this property, ask. The research behind these listings goes a good deal deeper than one page.
