When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
This casino's own demolition was network television - the centrepiece of a New Year's Eve broadcast, timed to the countdown, with more than 300,000 people watching it come down.
The Hacienda opened on 17 October 1956, and Nevada withheld the gaming licence over the man the owners wanted to run it. In 1964 Judy Bayley took it over after her husband's death and became the first woman in Nevada to solely own and run a hotel-casino.
Then in 1972 Allen Glick bought in - and took his first Nevada gaming licence here. The Hacienda is where the Argent Corporation began: the front company whose owner later testified in federal court that he ran it for the Chicago Outfit, and which went on to take the Stardust and the Fremont on Teamsters money.
Between 1974 and 1976 about $7 million was skimmed from slot machines across Glick's four casinos. Hacienda machines were among them. State agents ended it in May 1976.
WHAT 1980 MEANT AT THIS CASINO
By 1980 the Hacienda was Paul Lowden's. He had bought it outright three years earlier for $21 million, over the objection of the Gaming Control Board - Harry Reid's Gaming Commission licensed him anyway.
The building was the same one Glick's people had worked, and the tables were the same tables. Sixteen years after this deck was printed they blew the whole place up on live television.
THE RECORD
* 1956: Nevada withheld the casino licence over the Hacienda's chosen manager, Jake Kozloff.
* 1958: a Cessna painted Hacienda flew 64 days without landing - never beaten.
* 1964: Judy Bayley became Nevada's first woman to solely own and run a hotel-casino.
* 1972: Allen Glick bought in here and took his first Nevada gaming licence.
* 1974-76: about $7 million skimmed from slot machines across Glick's four casinos.
* May 1976: state agents ended the slot skim; Hacienda machines were among them.
* October 1977: Argent forced out; Paul Lowden bought the Hacienda for $21 million.
The Hacienda closed on 1 December 1996 and was imploded on New Year's Eve, live on Fox, with Michael Buffer calling "Let's get ready to crumble!" Mandalay Bay 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: 1980, 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 1980 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.
