Cards Mold/"Tina" Alibaba Ceramics Master Consolidated Info Thread (7 Viewers)

Last batch meaning: your recent bounty order in Sean’s GB 5? I wonder if Tina’s new chips are slightly thinner than before.
No. Tournament sets
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Yeah, this is concerning to me. If you don't have to mix old with new, no issue. But if people are getting add ons this could make stacking and counting a nightmare. That looks like almost a half a chip difference.
 
Are we still able to get these for .30-.35 cents a chip in 2022? What's the latest price per chip for a larger 10k+ order?

Just to reiterate, the price of the chips has always remained relatively the same for any quantity greater than 2k. The point of the group buys and 10Ks was to reach optimum pricing for sea freight shipping.

Sea freight shipping from China to the US has been an absolute mess and gotten much more expensive. A lot of people are currently ordering their sets directly individually and having them sent by air for a total order turnaround of about 3 weeks from order to delivery for an all-in price around ~$.53/chip shipped. You can absolutely still put together a group buy with 10K. I am not sure when the latest GB was that shipped by slow boat, but I am in a group that placed an order a couple weeks ago and she quoted us another middle option of a fast boat which was around .09/chip for shipping where the old slow boat rate was around .025/chip, but I think that has gone up to around .04+/chip these days. In the end we decided to pay the premium and the chips were produced and landed in the US in just a couple weeks even through the holidays. 43mm mangos come to me! Whereas I am in another GB where the order was placed in early August and it just landed stateside last week.
 
Just to reiterate, the price of the chips has always remained relatively the same for any quantity greater than 2k. The point of the group buys and 10Ks was to reach optimum pricing for sea freight shipping.

Sea freight shipping from China to the US has been an absolute mess and gotten much more expensive. A lot of people are currently ordering their sets directly individually and having them sent by air for a total order turnaround of about 3 weeks from order to delivery for an all-in price around ~$.53/chip shipped. You can absolutely still put together a group buy with 10K. I am not sure when the latest GB was that shipped by slow boat, but I am in a group that placed an order a couple weeks ago and she quoted us another middle option of a fast boat which was around .09/chip for shipping where the old slow boat rate was around .025/chip, but I think that has gone up to around .04+/chip these days. In the end we decided to pay the premium and the chips were produced and landed in the US in just a couple weeks even through the holidays. 43mm mangos come to me! Whereas I am in another GB where the order was placed in early August and it just landed stateside last week.

So without looking back at the specifics of the recent totals that people have told me about and running the calculations I think you are looking at pricing around ~$.36/chip shipped traditional slow boat in a 10K group buy, ~$.41/chip shipped by "fast boat" in GB, or ~$.53/chip expedited production and air shipping as individual order.
 
Thanks for the info @Eloe2000, as I've looked in various threads and been relatively lost. Time to get the artwork figured out.

And also 43mm chips are now also available. The chips themselves are a few more cents each and the shipping is a little more because that goes by weight obviously. Not many if any of these sets have landed in the US but a lot are under production. I should have mine in hand shortly.

Feel free to PM me or tag me if you have any questions.
 
If anyone is going to do a GB with delivery by boat and could take on a simple single chip add on of 150 chips could you please PM me? Thanks!
 
Can someone explain concisely why these are called Tina’s? I just can’t wade through 20 pages to figure it out.
 
Can someone explain concisely why these are called Tina’s? I just can’t wade through 20 pages to figure it out.
I think it's what @Rieguy had stated, but all there's certain blanks/versions of the cards mold available.

I'm not sure which one is old and new, but the ones I received that were from Tina were the more rounded edges and rounded corners of the mold itself than the chips with the charger edges and sharper corner mold. The former that I have for my cash set stack like bricks and has no spinners, where the latter are much more slick and has spinners which tend to be because of quality control issues.

Plus these different chips have different thickness to each other which can cause issues with stacking and racking.
 
I ordered some prototypes and air mail is the way to go if you don’t want to wait months for your chips. I’m just getting 20 chips for now, but ship date to expected delivery is just under one week. I’m supposed to get mine on Wednesday.
 
I just used the Aces templates. If you want to make your own you have to do math to get them to align.
Are the rolling edges hidden on the (Semi-Custom_Design_Options) Aces template? I see the rolling edges on the other Aces templates (Aces-Chips_V2&V4).

I zoomed out and there are a few, but I don't think they match up.
 
Are the rolling edges hidden on the (Semi-Custom_Design_Options) Aces template? I see the rolling edges on the other Aces templates (Aces-Chips_V2&V4).

I zoomed out and there are a few, but I don't think they match up.

They are not there. But pro tip, you can use the existing rolling edges often to figure out what some of the others are. I created or transferred over a couple spot patterns but was able to use the existing Acrs rolling edges for all of them. I never had to do the math myself.
 
Finally rolling through some of these threads catching up after my bout with covid. I'm actually glad I was flat on my back in bed on Jan 2nd. I don't think I would have been able to resist wading in to that conversation. Glad it's over now. My ass-hat list is pretty short, but it just got one bigger.
 
Finally rolling through some of these threads catching up after my bout with covid. I'm actually glad I was flat on my back in bed on Jan 2nd. I don't think I would have been able to resist wading in to that conversation. Glad it's over now. My ass-hat list is pretty short, but it just got one bigger.

Very happy to hear you are better!
 
Finally rolling through some of these threads catching up after my bout with covid. I'm actually glad I was flat on my back in bed on Jan 2nd. I don't think I would have been able to resist wading in to that conversation. Glad it's over now. My ass-hat list is pretty short, but it just got one bigger.
He is currently the only memeber of the list. I don’t sell to people who have demonstrated that they are not mentally capable of making financial decisions. That’s a scumbag move and I’m not a scumbag. Glad to hear you are better though!
 
Can someone explain concisely why these are called Tina’s? I just can’t wade through 20 pages to figure it out.
There is also an Anita as a contact as well. My cards mold set went through that producer/contractor/agent. I am very happy with the chips and Anita's are a bit cheaper. Overall difference? the blanks may be very slightly different in dimension from supplier to supplier and overtime with variances in materials being common.
 
Anybody know the minimum quantities for slow boat & "fast boat"?
There's no fast boat that I'm aware of. Just air shipping, for which I don't believe there is a minimum. I'm aware of some orders that were only a few hundred chips.

For the slow boat, I also don't think there is a minimum, although the best price per chip plus shipping cost kicks in at 10K, and as you know, the wait can be very long. That's why these orders tend to be group buys. But I think Tina will quote you a price for literally any number of chips. Someone correct me if that is wrong.
 
Yeah, there are different options and things are just so up in the air with the shipping situation these days that nothing is definitive. I am in a group that ordered just a couple weeks ago and Tina offered us three options including a fast boat and a slow boat option. Once again, the 10,000 chip amount was just about optimizing the chip cost on a per chip basis but you could slow boat ship 100 chips. It’s just not cost effective.

I would suggest if you want dirt cheap prices get an order of 4K or above and just contact Tina and ask about your options. They are constantly changing. They literally changed in the middle of ordering process on that buy.
 
It didn’t come up until I joked with her about transit times due to the LA/LB port backlog. I suspect she has a focus on reducing the price and thus assumes the regular boat is the right method.

Tina was telling me that the fast boat is “maybe 10 days faster” than their usual boat because they have a “unique port.” But, she then said that sometimes their boat is just as fast if the the port isn’t busy.
 
It didn’t come up until I joked with her about transit times due to the LA/LB port backlog. I suspect she has a focus on reducing the price and thus assumes the regular boat is the right method.

Tina was telling me that the fast boat is “maybe 10 days faster” than their usual boat because they have a “unique port.” But, she then said that sometimes their boat is just as fast if the the port isn’t busy.
Haha...

Translation: We can ship by boat, and when the port is really busy, we can usually find the harbor master in charge and pay him off to get our product loaded faster, and you will get it sooner (hence...fast boat from China). :cool
 
I know these companies produce a wide range of products, but I wonder how profitable these chips are for them, if they cost pennies to make or what. The fact that they’re custom, and their rolling edges match mostly, and the amount of back and forth with Tina it takes, seems like they must have a decent margin or else they wouldn’t do it at these prices.
 

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