OP
OP
I understand why it may seem reasonable from some of you guys to demand proof of the chips status to render final judgement on whether I got screwed here or not. I do. Reading through the thread, some of you guys aren't going to believe this and that's fine. I did take some pics. I didn't take dozens of pics and document every last chip. This may not make sense to many and that's fine. I bought over $50k in chips that week alone. I took pics of what I deemed to be a fair representation of the lot. I sent my grievance to @PepperPaul on 10/23.
I get a response fairly quickly.
I included every post. No edits here. A full week after his last and only response, I did exactly what I said I was going to do if he didn’t respond. All he needed to do to avoid all of this was simply respond “family emergency” or something in any of those previous 8 days.
The pics I posted were the only pics I took. As I mentioned, I buy a lot of chips. A lot! I don’t document every single chip. I never thought it would come to this for starters, he seemed like he was reasonable to begin with. And as @MC_CPA mentioned, I was pissed. I was looking to put this to bed as quickly as possible (that really worked out well) and just started moving on. I bought the necessary items to try to restore the chips that weren’t covered in flea bites or completely mis-colored to a sellable condition. The goal was simply to get two completed racks that I could list as good condition and move on. I immediately purchased replacement chips for the set these were intended to belong to. Then I went to work on seeing how many of these chips I could revive.
It was pretty clear to me that I was stuck with whatever the end result ended up being, so I didn’t document with pics every single chip during the proceeding process. I took a handful of pics that have been shared on this thread of the best examples and the worst. I identified the chips I deemed to be unsalvageable and threw them away. I went through every single chip one by one with a hand chisel and removed the hotstamp remnants first. Once completed, I gave them all a thorough cleaning in the newly purchased ultrasonic cleaner, following the advice on that particular thread. Prior to their bath, the chips all appeared to have been hit with a belt sander on each side. The pic of the four chips faces where what all 339 looked like. Like they'd been racked across a table made of concrete and covered in shit. The scuffs were on every chip and those scratches were full of dirt, which did nothing to reduce me being pissed. The pics he sent were of clean chips that practically glowed. These were either not the same chips pictured or the picture was well out of date. It made zero difference in my mind which was the case, as they were my problem now. Anyway, once they were cleaned, the scratch were still present, but minus the dirt ground into those scratches, they definitely looked better. I was waiting on the 43mm ceramic chips I ordered from BRPoker Pros to correct the warping (not something I expected to deal with on MINTY chips) and the wooden C-Clamps. So, while I waited, I gave the survivors a good oiling. That helped a ton. Finally I received all the components to flatten the warpage and learned how to do that.
The end results are in racks in storage. I can get them out and take a dozen or more pics. And I will if that's what the community would like to see. However, the end result of these chips and how they turned out after dozens of hours of work and several hundred dollars invested to get them into this condition should never have been a factor. I've only ever purchased near mint or better chips. I told @PepperPaul exactly what set these were intended for and sent pics before any money ever exchanged hands. The set had exclusively mint Tiger Palace and Empress Star chips. I asked if they would be a decent fit, condition wise. How his response wasn't immediately "NO" is baffling to me. I wasn't looking for a project. I was led to believe I could have these chips sent to Cole, he'd mill them and I'd slap the labels I specifically ordered for these chips on and that would be the end or my "work". I wouldn't have purchased them if I had been given accurate information.
But, none of that matters. The issue was being ghosted. I've said a dozen times, my goal was never to take this public. My goal was to come to some amicable resolution with the seller. And I extended multiple olive branches to do just that. I was ignored. Why are you suddenly interested in this now @PepperPaul You've had a month and only now decide to speak up. And why are we talking about this at all at this point? You've made your position clear. Your willing to refund me if I return the chips to you. Well, that's not going to happen as I can't get my time back, nor can I get the money invested in milling, labels, the items I purchased to revive these things, etc. And I'm not even looking for a refund. I don't want a nickel at this point. I spent a few hundred bucks and learned a ton. It wasn't what I had in mind, but it's fine. I've certainly made mistakes that were more costly than this.
All I ever wanted was to help stop the disappearing practices some sellers seem to think is acceptable. Here we are a month later and you've acknowledged that wasn't cool. There is zero reason to not send a simple "family emergency" note at any point prior to today. Tell me you weren't on your phone every single day since I sent you the original message that I was unhappy. If this wasn't 2025 and high speed internet is a available for free damn near everywhere, including hospitals, fine. If YOU were the patient and had been in a coma, fine. But, there is free wifi and your weren't in a coma. And I'd bet anything you didn't miss a single day of being on your phone. Maybe next time something like this happens, the seller will think, man...I don't want to go through all that bullshit and simply respond. Hell, lie to me. Tell me anything, but just communicate and this stays between us, where it belonged.
I don't care about the fucking chips at this point. Are they as good as you said they were? Not even in the ballpark. Are they as bad as I originally thought, nope. Turns out with 30 hours or so, there are a few racks of decent chips. If I were to list them after all of the work I put in, I'd say their condition is fair. So, somewhere in the middle of the trash I suggested and the MINTY you suggested now that my temper has calmed.
The issue is communication and if you're going to sell something, unless you tell the purchaser "buyer beware, all sales final" you should be prepared to communicate until the situation is resolved. The end. If you don't have time for that, then you don't have time to sell, imo. No one on earth is accepting my grandma needed me for a month and it was a 24/7 task with no internet.
I'm working really hard on controlling my temper these days. I fully admit it's been a problem for me my entire life. I tried my best to be cool. If you read the messages I sent to you, I did my very best to control my temper and not go nuclear from the jump. Waiting over a week seemed like long enough to make a public post. If I'd waited 2 or 3 weeks, the end result would have been the same. Because, you still hadn't responded until today. So, keep trying to steer this back into a chip issue all you like. We can take dozens more pics and waste a shitload more time. None of which makes any difference on where we go from here. Maybe just communicate if and when you sell something to someone next time and I'll wait another week before making a post.
I would like to apologize to the community for this entire mess. It's a colossal waste of everyone's time that was easily avoidable. My only motivation was to prompt some change in selling practices to the good of the community we all love. I am not without blame in this, I'm sure.
I get a response fairly quickly.
I included every post. No edits here. A full week after his last and only response, I did exactly what I said I was going to do if he didn’t respond. All he needed to do to avoid all of this was simply respond “family emergency” or something in any of those previous 8 days.
The pics I posted were the only pics I took. As I mentioned, I buy a lot of chips. A lot! I don’t document every single chip. I never thought it would come to this for starters, he seemed like he was reasonable to begin with. And as @MC_CPA mentioned, I was pissed. I was looking to put this to bed as quickly as possible (that really worked out well) and just started moving on. I bought the necessary items to try to restore the chips that weren’t covered in flea bites or completely mis-colored to a sellable condition. The goal was simply to get two completed racks that I could list as good condition and move on. I immediately purchased replacement chips for the set these were intended to belong to. Then I went to work on seeing how many of these chips I could revive.
It was pretty clear to me that I was stuck with whatever the end result ended up being, so I didn’t document with pics every single chip during the proceeding process. I took a handful of pics that have been shared on this thread of the best examples and the worst. I identified the chips I deemed to be unsalvageable and threw them away. I went through every single chip one by one with a hand chisel and removed the hotstamp remnants first. Once completed, I gave them all a thorough cleaning in the newly purchased ultrasonic cleaner, following the advice on that particular thread. Prior to their bath, the chips all appeared to have been hit with a belt sander on each side. The pic of the four chips faces where what all 339 looked like. Like they'd been racked across a table made of concrete and covered in shit. The scuffs were on every chip and those scratches were full of dirt, which did nothing to reduce me being pissed. The pics he sent were of clean chips that practically glowed. These were either not the same chips pictured or the picture was well out of date. It made zero difference in my mind which was the case, as they were my problem now. Anyway, once they were cleaned, the scratch were still present, but minus the dirt ground into those scratches, they definitely looked better. I was waiting on the 43mm ceramic chips I ordered from BRPoker Pros to correct the warping (not something I expected to deal with on MINTY chips) and the wooden C-Clamps. So, while I waited, I gave the survivors a good oiling. That helped a ton. Finally I received all the components to flatten the warpage and learned how to do that.
The end results are in racks in storage. I can get them out and take a dozen or more pics. And I will if that's what the community would like to see. However, the end result of these chips and how they turned out after dozens of hours of work and several hundred dollars invested to get them into this condition should never have been a factor. I've only ever purchased near mint or better chips. I told @PepperPaul exactly what set these were intended for and sent pics before any money ever exchanged hands. The set had exclusively mint Tiger Palace and Empress Star chips. I asked if they would be a decent fit, condition wise. How his response wasn't immediately "NO" is baffling to me. I wasn't looking for a project. I was led to believe I could have these chips sent to Cole, he'd mill them and I'd slap the labels I specifically ordered for these chips on and that would be the end or my "work". I wouldn't have purchased them if I had been given accurate information.
But, none of that matters. The issue was being ghosted. I've said a dozen times, my goal was never to take this public. My goal was to come to some amicable resolution with the seller. And I extended multiple olive branches to do just that. I was ignored. Why are you suddenly interested in this now @PepperPaul You've had a month and only now decide to speak up. And why are we talking about this at all at this point? You've made your position clear. Your willing to refund me if I return the chips to you. Well, that's not going to happen as I can't get my time back, nor can I get the money invested in milling, labels, the items I purchased to revive these things, etc. And I'm not even looking for a refund. I don't want a nickel at this point. I spent a few hundred bucks and learned a ton. It wasn't what I had in mind, but it's fine. I've certainly made mistakes that were more costly than this.
All I ever wanted was to help stop the disappearing practices some sellers seem to think is acceptable. Here we are a month later and you've acknowledged that wasn't cool. There is zero reason to not send a simple "family emergency" note at any point prior to today. Tell me you weren't on your phone every single day since I sent you the original message that I was unhappy. If this wasn't 2025 and high speed internet is a available for free damn near everywhere, including hospitals, fine. If YOU were the patient and had been in a coma, fine. But, there is free wifi and your weren't in a coma. And I'd bet anything you didn't miss a single day of being on your phone. Maybe next time something like this happens, the seller will think, man...I don't want to go through all that bullshit and simply respond. Hell, lie to me. Tell me anything, but just communicate and this stays between us, where it belonged.
I don't care about the fucking chips at this point. Are they as good as you said they were? Not even in the ballpark. Are they as bad as I originally thought, nope. Turns out with 30 hours or so, there are a few racks of decent chips. If I were to list them after all of the work I put in, I'd say their condition is fair. So, somewhere in the middle of the trash I suggested and the MINTY you suggested now that my temper has calmed.
The issue is communication and if you're going to sell something, unless you tell the purchaser "buyer beware, all sales final" you should be prepared to communicate until the situation is resolved. The end. If you don't have time for that, then you don't have time to sell, imo. No one on earth is accepting my grandma needed me for a month and it was a 24/7 task with no internet.
I'm working really hard on controlling my temper these days. I fully admit it's been a problem for me my entire life. I tried my best to be cool. If you read the messages I sent to you, I did my very best to control my temper and not go nuclear from the jump. Waiting over a week seemed like long enough to make a public post. If I'd waited 2 or 3 weeks, the end result would have been the same. Because, you still hadn't responded until today. So, keep trying to steer this back into a chip issue all you like. We can take dozens more pics and waste a shitload more time. None of which makes any difference on where we go from here. Maybe just communicate if and when you sell something to someone next time and I'll wait another week before making a post.
I would like to apologize to the community for this entire mess. It's a colossal waste of everyone's time that was easily avoidable. My only motivation was to prompt some change in selling practices to the good of the community we all love. I am not without blame in this, I'm sure.
