Here are a look at the variations of the blue Gold Coast cards. Right after the first blue card (known as Type 6 in the 1st edition of the Slot Card Price Guide) came out, the casino found out the arrows and the chain hole were both on the same side, and people were having trouble. So with the next release, type 7, they put the arrows on the right and moved the logo to the center. But "THE CLUB" was pushed down slightly and didn't leave room to imprint the player's name without overlap. [Gold Coast has a history of treating the player's names poorly. For years, on the yellow and orange-yellow cards that preceeded the blue ones, the names were always embedded in the cards backwards so they were readable from the back of the card.] On type 8 they reduced the size of "THE CLUB" and split the words, allowing the words to shift up and around the horse's hooves. Finally, I note what many will not consider a variation. The older cards had a pre-punched lozenge shaped hole in the upper left corner and now they have a round hole.
If this was punched by the person at the Card Booth, it would not be a variation (those kinds of punches wander around and vary in how clean the hole is) but these are already punched before they get imprinted. What do you guys think about this? Do you try (sometimes in vain) when you get a card to have the person not punch it? But they do so anyway, out of habit!