I was walking around the Mille Lacs Grand Casino, searching for cards on Saturday afternoon, and I had been through most of the place when I swung through the area to the left of the entrance. I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks and my jaw dropped. I stood there for a few minutes until I was awakened by a kind fellow who picked my jaw off the floor and said, "Excuse me, you dropped this."

I was staring at a clear plexiglass contest hopper, the type we have all seen at casinos for their drawings. But this box was not full of little slips of paper with the names of hopeful gamblers. IT WAS FULL OF SLOT CARDS! They have a contest to promote the new slot card system to win card points or other stuff And to enter, players throgh in THEIR OLD SLOT CARDS! Hundreds - man thousands of them! Lots of silver Grand Casino Hinkley cards - including old ones with the large logos. Lots of black Grand Casino Mille Lacs cards. Some Gold cards for each place that I have never seen before and that are not in Pat's book! I got up close and pushed at it. It was so heavy that it would be impossible to rotate the hopper at all. I had a thought of rotating it to see if a card or two might fall out the slot. No way. I tried to squeeze my fingers through the slot. I couldn't. Damn these pudgey fingers of mine! I did get my camera and shot some pictures, as I thought you all would be similarly amazed to see this.