Brand New And Researching For First Set (1 Viewer)

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sidjun

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Hey everyone!

I used to play poker casually with friends and family and have had a set of dice/suit chips from Walmart for ages. After going to casinos in Biloxi a couple of times, it ignited in me a passion for poker and I want to start a weekly or monthly game with some friends. I desired better chips, then I fell down the chipper rabbit hole lol. Looks like I've found my next expensive hobby! I've been researching for weeks and I've ordered a lot of sample sets including Monte Carlos, CPC, Dunes, Laurel Crown, and Jack casino among others. I'm trying to get a feel for the different qualities of chips.

I'm still learning about cash vs tournament sets and recommended denomination breakdowns. I'm thinking about starting off with a 300 or 500 chip set somewhere between $0.25/$1 per chip. From what samples I have, I'm in love with the Jack casino chips and now am on a mission to save up to get a set eventually lol but I know I'll need a more affordable set to start off with.

Advice, suggestions and tips are greatly appreciated, thanks!

All my chips so far:
chips.png
 
Welcome! Nice sample collection you have there. I like the idea of getting a good affordable set to start with.

It takes a little time on PCF to get an idea of the variety that’s available here, and how easy it may be to obtain.

Some chips show up a lot, some less frequent, and some very rarely but when they do they command a premium. Best thing to do is watch the classified area and after awhile you’ll appreciate what’s out there and where your tastes will go.

Have fun, great community of guys and gals here! You’ll love it here.
 
Welcome! I would suggest buying a less expensive set like mentioned above to find out what kind of games your group likes to play (or wait until everyone on the site goes crazy buying them and then sells them off when they decide they dont need another China Clay set).

At the same time save up for the next Chiproom sale that will eventually happen and then buy a large set when they first go on sale.

One word of warning, once you go to a high quality chip (like the new Jacks) you wont want to go back to anything inferior. This is not an inexpensive hobby!!
 
Welcome! I have a rack floating around somewhere in my house with many of those same sample sets. For a super-cheap set, I really liked those Monte Carlo Poker Club cheap slugged chips. I used a set of those for a couple of years before upgrading to some good ceramics and then eventually a custom CPC set. I think it's good to take your time, don't feel like you have to commit to a real expensive set out of the gate. Your tastes and preferences will likely evolve as you check out the forum and see other people's sets.
 
grantc54 said:
Welcome! I would suggest buying a less expensive set like mentioned above to find out what kind of games your group likes to play (or wait until everyone on the site goes crazy buying them and then sells them off when they decide they dont need another China Clay set).

At the same time save up for the next Chiproom sale that will eventually happen and then buy a large set when they first go on sale.

One word of warning, once you go to a high quality chip (like the new Jacks) you wont want to go back to anything inferior. This is not an inexpensive hobby!!
Click to expand...

Lol, yeah. After handling just the 4 Jacks I have, I was already trying to rationalize a barrel or two of Jacks vs a whole cheap set, even though it wouldn't be enough to play with. The temptation is high, but I'll bide my time! :D

For my first set, I was originally thinking a 500 count Monte Carlo. Crown Casino also looks good, but I can't find a sample set. I have King's Casino, Desert Heat, and Milano sample sets that should be arriving today through Monday. My wife and I also really like the Majestics sample we already have. Good colors, black inlays, and decent feel/quality. I am interested in checking out the new 43mm Royals from @Apache per @kmccormick100's suggestion, but it looks like I'll have to wait until June for a sample set.
 
Welcome - you did the right thing getting samples so you're definitely on the right track.

One piece of advice is that you should try (and I mean try since it's hard) to not compromise on the chips you get. If you like mint Paulsons, save and get them - don't buy lesser chips thinking they'll do when they never live up to your ideal chip.
 
My main general suggestion would be: skip China Clay's and go straight to CPCs/Paulson's/SunFly/Matsui/etc. You're going to end up there anyways, so save yourself some money in the long run. But before you do any of that, get samples.

Welcome on board!
 
Darson said:
Welcome - you did the right thing getting samples so you're definitely on the right track.

One piece of advice is that you should try (and I mean try since it's hard) to not compromise on the chips you get. If you like mint Paulsons, save and get them - don't buy lesser chips thinking they'll do when they never live up to your ideal chip.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this is the thing I'm currently dealing with. I'm wanting to jump on every Jack chip for sale I find, but I also know I'm new to this. I know they are great chips and I love the 4 chip sample I have (I work from home and shuffle them in my hand all day...) but before buying such expensive chips, I want to know that I really will continue to pursue this. To get my home games going and not have the chips be an expensive reminder of that "month" I really got into poker chips for some odd reason before moving on to other things. I'll take it as slow as I can (I'm sure my wife will be a nice voice of reason) and work my way up over time. (I might buy one rack of Jacks though...what's $200 here or there hahaha)
Plus, from a collector side, when I'm talking my friends' ears off about poker chips, I wouldn't mind having example sets from each level of quality so they can see and feel it. Otherwise it would just be my boring jabbering :p
 
Darson said:
One piece of advice is that you should try (and I mean try since it's hard) to not compromise on the chips you get. If you like mint Paulsons, save and get them - don't buy lesser chips thinking they'll do when they never live up to your ideal chip.
Click to expand...
Ghoti said:
My main general suggestion would be: skip China Clay's and go straight to CPCs/Paulson's/SunFly/Matsui/etc. You're going to end up there anyways, so save yourself some money in the long run. But before you do any of that, get samples.
Click to expand...
I agree with this, to a point. I would probably skip China Clays. But having some chips is better than having no chips if you really want to host a game. A set of 500 of those Monte Carlo chips is like $65 on Apache and just having denominations is leaps and bounds above dice chips. And I kind of feel like playing with some of those slugged chips, with their imperfections, molding errors, inlays coming loose, etc., makes someone really appreciate the quality of casino chips.
 
Welcome!! I'm pretty new to this forum myself. I joined mid April. Since then the chip fever has been very real lol. I'm a big fan of ceramics. I like the shuffle, feel, sound, and look of them. I have a tournament set of Tiki Kings I bought on here for a solid price and also a cash game set of Lucky Dragons that I had purchased off of BR Poker Pro's website. Similar to fieldsy above, my first set was a 500 piece Monte Carlo slugged set. They are 13.5 gram chips. They shuffled decent and actually were finished well so I liked them, but now they sit on the shelf and I'll probably end up gifting them to someone getting into Poker. I'd say to buy 2 sets of chips. The ones you'll play with a lot, and then the ones you'll bring out for special games. I use my ceramics for our weekly games and any games that are thrown together last minute. I just finished my Jack set for both tourney and cash stakes and I will exclusively be using those for monthly/specialty games. My vote is to go with a nice ceramic set for your daily driver, but China clays will also work fine and cost less.
 
fieldsy said:
I agree with this, to a point. I would probably skip China Clays. But having some chips is better than having no chips if you really want to host a game. A set of 500 of those Monte Carlo chips is like $65 on Apache and just having denominations is leaps and bounds above dice chips. And I kind of feel like playing with some of those slugged chips, with their imperfections, molding errors, inlays coming loose, etc., makes someone really appreciate the quality of casino chips.
Click to expand...
Fair point. As a temporary solution while you really decide what you want, they serve a purpose. But the smallest set possible, and not a giant limit set as I bought :(:D
 
fieldsy said:
I agree with this, to a point. I would probably skip China Clays. But having some chips is better than having no chips if you really want to host a game. A set of 500 of those Monte Carlo chips is like $65 on Apache and just having denominations is leaps and bounds above dice chips. And I kind of feel like playing with some of those slugged chips, with their imperfections, molding errors, inlays coming loose, etc., makes someone really appreciate the quality of casino chips.
Click to expand...

That is some good advice. I went Dice > Slugged Plastic > Milanos (China clay) > became active on this site > Paulson used chips custom labels > Jack's

If I found this site earlier I likely would have skipped buying 2000 Milanos.

Getting samples of everything is the right track.
 
sidjun said:
I'm thinking about starting off with a 300 or 500 chip set somewhere between $0.25/$1 per chip...
Click to expand...
I only skimmed everybody else's replies, so I may have missed if anyone else suggested this, but if @The Chip Exchange still has any of the Horseshoe Cincy 500 chip sets left, they are the perfect (relatively) affordable real casino set to get you started. You can find them here:

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/black-friday-sale.34934/
And the direct purchase link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=2Y3KX7XN6LB2N

They're not going to be anywhere near as "mint" and unused as the JACK Detroit chips, but $450 for 500 real casino chips is pretty legit. Even without cleaning them up, that's still enough to impress friends and adversaries and make your game feel like the real deal.
 
MoeTremper said:
$450 for 500 real casino chips is pretty legit.
Click to expand...
Totally agree! I had been looking at the Horseshoe Cincy 500s as a possibility if I did want to leap straight to casino chips. I had only found the $750 cleveland set on Apache and this cincy for $795: https://www.ebay.com/itm/500-Horses...860541?hash=item1ef7e2e33d:g:fT8AAOSwVIZcUQ3l
Personally, I much prefer the color/design of the cincy, but $795 was closing in on the price of just diving in on a super small set of Jacks. Most of my games are going to be 4-6 people initially, so I don't need a huge set yet.
If the Horseshoe Cincy 500 for $450 is still available @The Chip Exchange I'd be interested though
 
So far, my wife and I like the design of the Majestics and Desert Heats the most from our sample sets (full clays excluded).
I like the feel of the Laurel Crown and surprisingly the Brybelly coin inlays? I like the metal and weight. Feels nice.
We still have the Kings Casino sample coming in.

What I do know: after playing with lots of samples, although plastics like Monte Carlo look nice for the price, the flashing on the edges drives me crazy while handling. I feel the same about the Desert Heats...

So, short of Kings Casino impressing me a lot when it arrives, or pulling the trigger on Horseshoe cincys or Jacks, I think Majestic might be the way to go.
 
Some follow up questions:
If I end up waiting months/years before trying to acquire Jacks, what will the market be like? Hard to find mint I imagine since most will be used at that point, so certainly more expensive for mint? Harder to come by and more expensive for used as well?
Also, how regularly to casino chips enter the home market? Was Jacks unique because the rebranding failed and so most of the time its used chips and not mint?
Put more succinctly, what's the likelihood of another casino's mint chips hitting the market, and how bad will it be if I miss out on the Jacks now?
 

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