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 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
(January 16, 2002)
Slain Vegas casino executive's
silver dollars go on the market
LAS VEGAS (AP) - More than 100,000
silver dollars collected by slain Las Vegas casino executive Ted Binion
are being offered for sale to collectors.
Goldline International Inc., of
Santa Monica, Calif., announced Tuesday that it is the marketing agent
for Binion's collection of Morgan and Peace silver dollars dated from
1878 to 1935.
Spectrum Numismatics International
Inc., a coin wholesale company in Orange County, Calif., bought the
collection Oct. 1 for $3.3 million, according to court records. About
50,000 of the dollars never have been circulated.
Mark Albarian, president and chief
executive officer of Goldline, said some of the coins are available for
less than $50. The most expensive cost more than $10,000.
Binion was a high-profile and
often-troubled gambling figure whose family owns the Horseshoe Club in
downtown Las Vegas.
He was found dead in his Las Vegas
home in September 1998. His girlfriend at the time, Sandy Murphy, and
her lover, Rick Tabish, were convicted of the killing and are serving
life sentences in prison.
Authorities claimed the killers
wanted Binion's silver, estimated during the trial to be worth about $7
million.
Tabish, a Montana contractor, was
arrested two days after Binion's death as he tried to dig up Binion's
coins from a desert vault near Pahrump.
Goldline said many of the Binion
dollars originally were kept in bags untouched for years in a walk-in
freezer at the Horseshoe hotel-casino.
Dollars were regularly used in
casino play before 1964, when the government reduced the silver content
in silver dollars.
The Binion coins were authenticated
by Numismatic Guaranty Corp., a national coin inspection, authentication
and grading company. It sealed each silver dollar in tamperproof plastic
showing the coin's year and mint of issue, plus the coin's grade.
"We have bags of 1885, 1886
and 1887 coins that are brand-new," said Albarian, who added a 1878
San Francisco mint dollar sold Tuesday for $7,900.
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