Ten Items I Admit Purchasing At A Las Vegas Casino Giftshop

Unlike the casino coffee shop's 99 cent breakfast special, the small casino gift shop is designed to yield a small profit to the casino, but why that should be necessary, I'll never understand. I have my favorite, which will remain anonymous. I've already divulged too much! The lady who works there is either very nice or mean as hell; everything in Vegas is extremes and there is no middle ground at these gift shops. I'm talking mostly about those small gift shops that sell tourist items, not the upscale boutiques at the Forum Shops or Desert Passage. These walk-in-closet shops sell mostly over-priced liquor, souvenir tee shirts, candies, food, other various chatskas and sundries.


Do you have the nerve to admit that you bought or were thinking of buying, a dice clock?

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Sometimes the memories evoked are much more important than the objects purchased.


Over the years I admit to buying:

1) Recently, some souvenir shot glasses for my niece ( she collects them as candle holders ) that cost more to ship to her than I paid for the shot glasses

2) A VHS video travel tape ( ancient history - this goes back many years before the DVD, and even before the Internet ) of Las Vegas attractions to convince my late father-in-law to visit me when I moved to Las Vegas back in 1983. Today, a link attachment in an e-mail would have done the trick.

3) Toothpaste, toothbrush, shaving cream, a shaver, etc... (a welcome to prison gift set ?) that became a necessity after my wife and I decided to jump on a plane from Albuquerque to Las Vegas with just the clothes on our backs - on a whim when we were both loose and carefree - one of the best vacations I've ever had!

4) A dice clock - when I saw the nice one my mom got for attending a time share sales event, I just had to have one for myself!

5) A pack of tums and a tin of extra strength Tylenol when a particularly devastating session at the dice table left me with both indigestion and a bad headache.

6) An ugly, overpriced souvenir tee shirt that I wore only once (at the Palace Station, I'm delirious after a big win. )

7) A pint of Jim Beam (to help me with my insomnia, would you believe?)

8) A souvenir deck of used casino cards with holes punched through them - maybe these were free, at least I would hope so.

9) Several souvenir casino pairs of dice, for practise!

10) A large, very costly replica of a video slot machine that my Mother-In-Law took back to Philadelphia without asking me if she could have it - but I've since forgiven her for taking it!

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What's on your list? I promise not to tell.