I never created a feedback thread and instead went with feedback in PMs or text messages. In light of the news of CPC stopping sales in April 2025, I figured documenting my journey may help others who are trying to finalize their custom CPC set as well. For all we know, this may be the last chance to create your own custom set of clay chips.
I had been thinking about making a custom poker chip set since I became active in chipping again in 2019, but never could come up with an idea or design that I liked. That goes on for the next two years of dabbling here and there with some early designs to get the colors, spots and overall theme into a place where I could just look at it and say that's the one!
Early on designs went with standard colors for my chip set.
I figured this was my chance to build something that's very difficult or very expensive to do with a Paulson set. Why not go with Cali colors since yellow 5s are so expensive to acquire.
The last design above was something I looked at for several months and kept coming back to it to make minor modifications. Every time I did, I changed it back to the orignial design and said yea I think that's the one.
Next up was to design an inlay. I grew up in Austin, and moved away for several years for work. In my home office in Houston, I had a photo print of this bridge that would remind me of Austin so that became my theme for the chip design.
Looking through the custom chip design forums, I looked at suggestions for designers and decided I would use @timinater to help me design mine. We threw ideas back and forth and after several iterations of designs I found an inlay I felt was simple enough yet got the solid feeling of my theme and design. In the picture below, I went with the bottom left.
During the entire process, I think I looked at over 50 different custom chip design threads and discussions. Taking from them what I liked and what stood out to me. From that review I knew I wanted some color matched inlays so we designed up an alternate inlay design with just ATX and the denomination. The ATX would be color matched to the 3 colors of the chip, starting with the base color and then the edge spots.
@timinater has a lot a lot of experience in this realm with the colors and matching of the inlays to the chip itself. I highly recommend anyong who is considering a design to get color samples and mold samples so you can see the color combinations in person and also so you can shuffle and feel the chip molds to see which one looks and sounds the best to you. I thought the large crown mold sounded the best by far, but visually to me it wasn't as appealing. DSQ and Jockey also both sounded very nice and looked good as well, but DSQ was by far the winner in visual appeal. I bought a handful of chip samples on the forum of not only brand new chips with inlays in different molds, but also chips in different wear conditions. Many have said that CPC chips will age very well over time and only get better with more use and more wear. I got my hands on to a worn set of DSQ and after shuffling them for a week I was sold on that as my mold.
Finally in 2021, I submitted to CPC my first order. A bit over 1200 chips from 0.25 to $500 to be enough to run all the various games and stakes that I play and host.
After a wait of just under a year, my chip set finally came in! If you have informed delivery with USPS, look for a delivery being sent from Gorham, ME.
Being from Texas and having players who are used to more traditional colors, the standard size white $100 did present some challenges. I ended up submitting an order for some secondary $100s with a charcoal base.
I felt like the set was in a pretty good place, but I kept looking at it and feeling something was missing. The purple $25 and the charcoal $100 just didn't play well together. From that I started to design a secondary $25 and figured with the new add on I'm going to order enough chips to get my set large enough to host two tables if ever needed.
I present to you the final form of my chip set. Should I host two tables, I also have the option of using the primary $25 and $100 on one table and the secondary $25 and $100 on the second table.
Also, if you're going to go through the effort of creating a custom chip set, you might as well go all the way with custom designs for a felt and dealer buttons.
My latest addtional will be a soon to arrive 58" round table which works very well for more social mixed games.
I had been thinking about making a custom poker chip set since I became active in chipping again in 2019, but never could come up with an idea or design that I liked. That goes on for the next two years of dabbling here and there with some early designs to get the colors, spots and overall theme into a place where I could just look at it and say that's the one!
Early on designs went with standard colors for my chip set.
I figured this was my chance to build something that's very difficult or very expensive to do with a Paulson set. Why not go with Cali colors since yellow 5s are so expensive to acquire.
The last design above was something I looked at for several months and kept coming back to it to make minor modifications. Every time I did, I changed it back to the orignial design and said yea I think that's the one.
Next up was to design an inlay. I grew up in Austin, and moved away for several years for work. In my home office in Houston, I had a photo print of this bridge that would remind me of Austin so that became my theme for the chip design.
Looking through the custom chip design forums, I looked at suggestions for designers and decided I would use @timinater to help me design mine. We threw ideas back and forth and after several iterations of designs I found an inlay I felt was simple enough yet got the solid feeling of my theme and design. In the picture below, I went with the bottom left.
During the entire process, I think I looked at over 50 different custom chip design threads and discussions. Taking from them what I liked and what stood out to me. From that review I knew I wanted some color matched inlays so we designed up an alternate inlay design with just ATX and the denomination. The ATX would be color matched to the 3 colors of the chip, starting with the base color and then the edge spots.
@timinater has a lot a lot of experience in this realm with the colors and matching of the inlays to the chip itself. I highly recommend anyong who is considering a design to get color samples and mold samples so you can see the color combinations in person and also so you can shuffle and feel the chip molds to see which one looks and sounds the best to you. I thought the large crown mold sounded the best by far, but visually to me it wasn't as appealing. DSQ and Jockey also both sounded very nice and looked good as well, but DSQ was by far the winner in visual appeal. I bought a handful of chip samples on the forum of not only brand new chips with inlays in different molds, but also chips in different wear conditions. Many have said that CPC chips will age very well over time and only get better with more use and more wear. I got my hands on to a worn set of DSQ and after shuffling them for a week I was sold on that as my mold.
Finally in 2021, I submitted to CPC my first order. A bit over 1200 chips from 0.25 to $500 to be enough to run all the various games and stakes that I play and host.
After a wait of just under a year, my chip set finally came in! If you have informed delivery with USPS, look for a delivery being sent from Gorham, ME.
Being from Texas and having players who are used to more traditional colors, the standard size white $100 did present some challenges. I ended up submitting an order for some secondary $100s with a charcoal base.
I felt like the set was in a pretty good place, but I kept looking at it and feeling something was missing. The purple $25 and the charcoal $100 just didn't play well together. From that I started to design a secondary $25 and figured with the new add on I'm going to order enough chips to get my set large enough to host two tables if ever needed.
I present to you the final form of my chip set. Should I host two tables, I also have the option of using the primary $25 and $100 on one table and the secondary $25 and $100 on the second table.
Also, if you're going to go through the effort of creating a custom chip set, you might as well go all the way with custom designs for a felt and dealer buttons.
My latest addtional will be a soon to arrive 58" round table which works very well for more social mixed games.
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