Update:
TL/DR: pics of the washed/oiled chips at the bottom.
The chips arrived safe and sound last Monday. Upon opening the boxes, my initial feeling was one of disappointment. The chips were as advertised, but these chips were grimey - the fracs were a greenish brown color, the $1/$5's varied significantly in color, and roughly a 1/4 of these chips had casino gunk in the molds (mostly in the "A's"). Also, I'm not sure why, but the "Kenmore" on the .25 fracs have a blue coloring, which is pretty consistent across all the fracs. The fracs are in a lot better condition than the $1's and $5's - again, as advertised, but the difference is noticeable. I left the chips in the boxes for a day after opening.
Eventually, I decided that I would need to clean them, even if it was only in an attempt to cut my losses and sell them later. I started washing the chips, and while the $1's and $5's improved in color, the .25 fracs improved dramatically! I used the hottest water my hands could handle to wash the fracs, and they went from greenish brown back to off-white. The edges of the fracs could still use more cleaning - is it safe to use a Magic Eraser on these ASM chips? I tried my best to take off all of the casino gunk from the $1's and $5's, but some probably remains from the first batches washed before process improvements. One of the $1 chips is missing a sticker/inlay? on one side - this chip instantly became my favorite.
After they were all washed, I used the water/oil trick to add oil, with mixed results. I've seen everyone say that only a little bit of oil is needed, but I think with the used $1 and $5's, considering their condition/color, more was probably needed. The water/oil trick worked, generally, but often did not get oil into the grooves of the mold itself. About ~70% of the $5's and ~40% of the $1's were re-oiled using the same water/oil trick, this time with me rubbing the molds with my fingers as they were coming out of the water/oil mixture. The blue chips took the oil well, and only 3 of the worst chips needed oil applied manually after 2 attempts. There were about 50 red chips that I had to manually apply oil to because it wasn't reaching the mold.
Pros: After lots of time and effort, I now have a clean, relatively gunk-free set of chips that has a bank of $1,000+. The colors of the chips are now fairly consistent, and a vast improvement. Chips were purchased at china clay prices, so I achieved my goal of getting a cheap cash set.
Cons: I still don't have a $20/$25 chip (although admittedly, one is not absolutely necessary). I also wonder if I would have been happier if I simply purchased a brand new china clay set of a similar count.
Collateral Damage: I broke one of the $5 chips during the washing process, and one of the latches on the 300-chip poker chip case I had broke. I now need to look into storage options.
Below are pics of the new set, as well as of other random chips I have. Still not sure how I'm going to proceed from here, but open to suggestions/trade offers.
