Rare Incident

Yesterday, something strange happened and in the 12000 hours that I spent at the tables so far, I have never seen this before.
The dealer was just about to start a new round when a card slipped out of her fingers and fell right into the slot for the tips.As the pit didn't seem to know what to do, I said "I guess you have to get that card back". The TC was +2 so I had three blacks out and we were still in the first half of the shoe. I sensed a great danger that this interesting shoe would be aborted. For ten minutes nothing happened:They didn't have the key for the tip-box! And then to my disappointment they brought in an entirely new set of cards and the round was obviously cancelled. As I was anyway near the end of my session I grabbed my chips and went to the cash desk. The floor manager came to apologize and expained that the regulations didn't allow them to open the tip-box during exploitation.
While I was driving home I figured out that the aborted shoe had deprived me of about 10 bucks in expectation. Not the end of the world.
I wonder If someone here has had a similar experience and how has it been settled?

Francis Salmon

able to look into the tip box and see what the card was? If they could identify it couldn't they just replace it and burn the replacement? Was this discussed? If they couldn't identify the card was the tip box on a chain where they could have moved it and shook it to see if they could identify the card? Looks like bad luck is more than just catching small cards on plus counts.

It's true with a torch lamp they might have been able to identify the card.(Although that chance would have been small in view to the old saying that a slice of bread always falls onto the side of the butter :-)). But why would they then burn the replacement? In that case they could just as well have finished the shoe and brought in the new cards afterwards.
I noticed on an other occasion that this casino was quick in taking drastic measures.Once a dealer missed the discard tray and a bunch of cards fell on the floor. Now they halted everything in order to check all the cards. Logically they should have finished the shoe and make the inventory afterwards.

Francis Salmon