I’ve passed some fascinating things in my travels,  many of which were museums for offbeat items.  There’s a museum for clogs,  a museum for underwear,  a museum for volleyball,  accountants,  professional wrestling,  boxing,  marbles,  broken glass,  horseshoes,  and beer.  Think of something and chances are that somewhere,  somehow,  someone has assembled a collection of it for display.

But there’s one museum that’s missing.  And that’s a world-class museum dedicated to gambling paraphernalia.  Sure,  there are smaller museums with nice small collections of material.  There’s the Lost Vegas collection in Las Vegas  --  dedicated to Las Vegas gambling history.  There’s a gambling museum in remote Virginia City,  Nevada,  and a preserved Asian gambling house in northern California.  But if you want a Smithsonian Institute of Gambling you’re out of luck.  Too bad.  Today especially,  with the rapid proliferation of casinos, internet poker and gambling,  the audience for such a museum has never been greater.

But here’s the good news.  There is a guy working to build this museum.  He has the vast collection of gambling wares to do it  (and personal connections to many other collections as well).  All he needs is the place to put it.

That guy is Steve Forte.  I happened to get to know him,  his unique skills, and his world-class collection of gambling equipment,  cheating devices,  and related paraphernalia when I was visiting Las Vegas during the last week of May this year.  I was introduced to him by another remarkable fellow,  the owner and operator of the Gambling Book Shop,  Howard Schwartz.  Howard and I were talking about gambling collectibles when I mentioned my interest in faro layouts and casekeepers.  He suggested that if I wanted to see the nicest examples of faro equipment and other gambling devices that I should contact Steve Forte.  This I did;  and therein lies a story.

Steve was a most generous host.  Although he was in the middle of moving to a new house,  he gladly showed me his enormous collection of gambling objects,  new and old alike.  Responding to my specific query he showed me first,  two of the best preserved faro casekeepers I had ever seen.  These abacus-like devices were used to keep track of the cards dealt in faro,  the gambling game that really built the West  --  where players wagered large and small sums literally on the turn of a card.  It is virtually impossible these days to find any that are even functional.  Though his dated back to the 1800s,  they were in impeccable condition  --  suitable for the world class museum he envisions.

He also showed me a perfectly preserved faro layout  -- the felt cloth on which the game was played  --  much like a craps layout is used today.  He had it spread in front of an old tintype of the very layout itself in use in a late 19th-century gambling house.  It was one of over one hundred similar displays in his home.

These were but the tip of the gigantic iceberg of his collection,  which was only partially displayed.  As it was,  the collection was crowded together because of the limits of space even in the large home in which they were kept.  Other gambling objects included:  an enormous wooden dice  “goose”  --  a device used to shake up and then dispense dice;  casino chips of every material and description dating back to the 1800s;  dice dating back to ancient Egypt;  and a plethora of cheating devices.

Steve does not just have the most impressive collection of gambling devices that I have ever seen.  He himself is a very impressive guy in his own right.  He is perhaps the foremost expert on cheating,  having written a book on the subject and serving as a security consultant to many casinos around the world.  He briefly introduced me to a few cheating devices he had collected over the years:  crooked dice,  crooked dice cups that could determine what numbers were rolled by the experienced operator,  devices for determining in which slots a roulette ball would be captured;  ingeniously-marked cards,  and a table-mounted device for holding out cards in poker.

There were also displays of many gambling games that I was unfamiliar with  -- games involving unique arrangements of wheels,  balls,  dice,  and mystifying layouts,  all meant to entice the bored gambler.  All would fascinate and intrigue anyone with even a passing interest in gambling history and lore.

Steve gave me and my companion of the day  --  ESPN poker writer Jay Lovinger  --  an amazing presentation of his personal cheating techniques,  used for entertainment and instructive purposes only.  I don’t know if he has the quickest and smoothest hands in the business as many experts claim.  I haven’t seen enough card and dice manipulators to judge.  But I can tell you this.  He was able to reverse cuts and switch dice so quickly and smoothly that I couldn’t see anything occurring even though I was only one foot away from his hands.  And I was looking carefully each of the eight or so times that he slowly demonstrated his technique.  The man has amazing chops.

Finally,  this was not just a show to impress some poker author and player  --  though impress me it surely did.  There was a more serious purpose.  You see,  Steve had had a deal to develop the very Smithsonian Institute-like museum of gambling that we sorely need.  A major casino in Las Vegas had reached an agreement with him to house it.  But the plans had just fallen through.  And now this collection  --  and a few like it that were to be part of this museum  --  are largely unknown and unseen.  Steve’s mission is to display this invaluable material to the world as it should be displayed:  in Las Vegas,  in a top-flight museum with all the space,  lighting,  and explanatory material that it deserves.