Ante Up: Gambling Memorabilia

Dai Vernon’s Gaffed Faro Box. Chicago: A. Ball Bro., ca. 1900s. German silver faro box gaffed with side-squeeze, left square-up, and right lock. In a period brown leather case. Marked by Ball & Bro. Traces of green felt to underside. VERNON’S PERSONALLY OWNED DEALING BOX, accompanied by an autograph signed note by Vernon from his sale of the item to Tom Blue. From the collection of Tom Blue, with handwritten paper wrapper which identifies this example as Vernon’s, as well as the gaffes incorporated in the box. Size 4 x 3 3/8 x 1 ¾”. Case 3 ½ x 4 ¼ x 2”. Vernon acquired this dealing box in the 1930s while tracing his way across the U.S. in pursuit of the methods of crooked gamblers, specifically one that might reveal the secret to the elusive center deal. He went to considerable lengths to obtain it from a pawn broker in Miami, to whom it had been pawned by a certain Jim Whitley, a former faro dealer, for $25. Whitley told Vernon he had paid $100 for the box decades earlier, when faro was the most popular betting card game in the land – as well as one in which cheating was endemic, and where profits to a skilled sharper could be handsome. Whitley was reticent to reveal the box’s inner workings – an attitude Vernon attributed to the terms of an unspoken “guild” that existed among old-time faro dealers. With some pretense to membership in the guild himself, Vernon cajoled Whitley into revealing the box’s several complex gaffes (see Ben, “Dai Vernon: A Biography,” pp. 180-2). An understanding of this tradition of which Whitley was a part – “the old thing” – was important to Vernon. Vernon later brought out the box in the presence of other advantage players and “ mechanics” from whom he wished to gain insight, and he considered it one of his “prized possessions” (ibid.), a sentiment indeed suggested by the act of his formal, written transfer of ownership of the piece to Tom Blue later in life.