I'm curious to hear what your experience is with getting "unique" (for lack of a better way of putting it) Silver Strikes by actually playing the machines in the casinos, and the reason that I ask is this:

My first Silver Strikes were obtained by playing the machines at the Palms. I played for quite awhile and got somewhere around 15-20 strikes. Of those, all but one of them was clad...either Drift or Rojo...and the one more "unique" one was a .999 Playboy Mansion.

I had similar results the first time I played at Four Queens: all clad strikes, all of them Queens of Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Nothing really special.

So, by then I had made up my mind that playing the machines was only going to get me strikes that maybe I could trade for other, older strikes, or it would get strikes that I could redeem for cash at the cage for nothing more than playing longer.

At that point, I decided to go to Sam's Town to gather all of their current strikes from their machines. To my surprise, I actually found a pretty good variety. Lots of clads (Muscle Cars), but also a good number of .999 silver ones from prior issues coming out, too...probably one in every 3-4 was "unique."

At that point, it was actually really FUN to play the machines, cause there was a good chance I'd get a strike that I didn't have yet.

Then, I made the trip to Planet Ho (the last of the four casinos with SS machines). But, I found all clad strikes there--nothing unique or different.

Since then, I've stumbled onto two sessions of playing, one at the Palms and one at the Four Queens, where the .999 strikes were more plentiful. My last visit to the Four Queens was the first time I'd been able to get anything but the current clads, with plenty of .999 Man's 4 Vices coming out, along with some others. And, a few trips ago at the Palms, I was able to get a good number of unique .999 strikes to add to my collection.

So my questions are:

1) What are your experiences regarding being able to find "unique" .999 strikes playing the machines? I guess by "unique" what I mean is non-clad strikes or strikes that weren't just recently released.

2) What explanation is there that sometimes a casino will have nothing but current clads in their machines one day, and the next week one might find a good variety of older ones?

3) Where do the casinos find the older ones with which to stock their machines? Are people still redeeming these at the cage? Do they withhold a bunch from each release so they can use them later??

4) Is there any method to knowing when to hit up a casino when the .999 silver is there for the striking vs not? :-)

Sorry this is so long. I just find it a lot more fun adding to my collection by playing, but I'm just trying to determine how realistic that is, or if I should just stick to auctions and trading on this board. LOL.