Casino's history changes on a handshake

Sharkey's has always been a throwback, and then some.

Prior to its recent transition, which began New Year's Day after approval of a much-anticipated sale, the building was a time warp that was part kitsch and part living cultural museum of the American West.

True to form, the transaction to sell the casino was done predominantly the old-fashioned way, not with two competing teams of lawyers splitting commas and trading surrogate clauses.

Instead, when Sharkey Begovich decided to sell the casino that he not only ran but personified for more than three decades, he did it with numerous one-on-one phone calls between himself and the casino's new owner, Hal Holder.

As Valley residents well know, there's a lot more value contained in Sharkey's than the estimated $1.6 million in real property it sold for, or the reported $2.4 million a planned auction in February will garner.

For this special edition of stories devoted to Sharkey's sale, history and transition, The Record-Courier talked to Begovich, Holder and several long-time employees and patrons for various perspectives on what makes the place at the corner of Gilman Avenue and Highway 395 much more than the average rural Nevada casino.

And we talked to Valley residents in order to get a picture of what's happened, what is happening and what comes next for the Gardnerville landmark.

And like Sharkey told us, "It's pretty hard to get (his life and the casino) to come out of the end of the pencil."

But, we tried.