Remembering Vegas

      They blew up the Dunes where a 30-foot Sultan sign once stood guard, the Landmark hotel that Howard Hughes owned and the Sands where Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack" hung out. Mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel's room was gutted at the Flamingo Hilton, and fire destroyed the original El Rancho Vegas, the first casino on the Strip.
      But historical Las Vegas lives on in the archives of Steve Cutler, who boasts the most extensive collection of chips, playing cards, dice, slot machines, swizzle sticks, casino china, crystal, documents, menus, souvenir ash trays and photos from the Las Vegas of legend, as well as other Nevada casino towns.
      "That's the largest collection (of Nevada gambling memorabilia) that I have ever seen on exhibition," said Phillip Earl, curator of the Nevada Historical Society at the University of Nevada, Reno.
      Earl's organization operates museums but focuses more on mining and Indian collectibles.
      With Cutler's collection, "you can literally trace the history of gaming in Nevada from 1931 (the year Nevada legalized casino gambling) to present," Cutler says.
      The only problem is Cutler's Nevada Gold Museum is going to become homeless in January, because he declined to renew a contract with Hilton Hotels Corp. to exhibit his collection at their casinos. Cutler explains that Hilton didn't want to feature the museum in Las Vegas, which is where he believes it belongs.
      "I believe that Las Vegas is the gaming collectibles capital of the world," he says.
      So Cutler is looking for another casino, restaurant or other tourist attraction to house an exhibition that provides a haunting look at Las Vegas' years as a celebrity hangout and haven for mobsters.
      Cutler says he'll even sell the 15,000-piece collection, if necessary, if a buyer wants to employ him as curator and keep the collection intact. The asking price: more than $2 million. "My primary concern is not to sell it to a private individual. It's to get it out so the public can see it," Cutler says. "It's the only museum of its type."
      Cutler, however, argues the museum is a compellingly cheap, low maintenance attraction that would bring affluent, adult crowds of serious gamblers. Cutler believes he owns the state's most extensive casino chip collection and chip collecting has become a hot new hobby, particularly for the sophisticated gamblers who play table games.
      His collection includes $100,000 chips from the Sheraton Desert Inn, the Las Vegas Hilton and Stratosphere.
      In addition to the the better-known casinos, he has chips from places like Tule Springs Ranch, a casino operated by J.K. Houssels, chairman of Showboat Inc. from 1954 to 1957; the Las Vegas Gun Club, which also was a gambling hall before closing in 1957; and even chips he designed for Hilton Hotels and the Pioneer Club.
      Housing the museum would make the host casino the convention center of choice for annual chip collecting expositions, he says. It would give the casino an easy way to generate publicity on television and in newspapers and magazines, he adds.
      But Cutler's collection doesn't stop with casino chips.
      With the possible exception of Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren's collection, "I think I have the only complete Nevada decanter collection."
      His photo collection includes shots of Elvis Presley and Liberace wearing each other's costumes at the Riviera in 1956; Liza Minelli, then 12, with her mother on stage at the Flamingo; Debbie Reynolds and her first husband, Eddie Fisher; and Jack Benny at a penny slot machine at the Flamingo in 1958.
      "It's primarily an adult attraction although it does offer good, educational family value," Cutler says.
      A recent informal survey at Lauglin's Flamingo Hilton indicates 1,000 visitors stopped in the museum every day. Half of those were not staying at the hotel, and Cutler estimates the average visitor dropped $20 in the casino.
      "Hilton will not admit that these people are coming for the museum," Cutler adds. "In Vegas, these numbers would be staggering."
      The museum drew television crews when it first opened in 1994 at the Pioneer Club, known for its trademark Vegas Vic cowboy sign. After the Pioneer Club closed in 1995, Cutler found a temporary home for the museum at the Flamingo Hilton in Reno and later relocated to the similarly named Laughlin casino.
      Cutler can be reached at 257-1087 but asked that his address not be published.