Collector or Hobbyist? (2 Viewers)

[FestiveKnight]

There’s a poll but I’m also just curious generally how folks think about their chipping.

This is on my mind as I stare at my collection every day and think about what motivates me and what brings me joy in the hobby.

While owning nice casino chips has always brought me some satisfaction, I’ve come to realize that the real fun is custom designs and being able to act on them. I think about some of the greats on here and can think of some who seems to do one more than the other and I really find myself drawn towards the energy that exists around custom designs.

Do others see this distinction? Have you changed between the two? Can you say you’ve enjoyed one more than the other?

This is not a sale ad but I stare at my money trees all the time and wonder if I’d be happier selling them and funding some CPC sets (god willing they reopen) or fun relabel sets. Today I am leaning yes….

 

[NotRealNameNoSir]

Sell them! You know your apes don't care what they play with. Flood the zone with cheap customs and 2 racks of fracs.

 

[FestiveKnight]

Btw this post was motivated by my wife he caught me staring at my chips perseverating and asked what the point of PCF is if not to discuss such things?

 

[BarrieJ3]

Huh, strange timing. I’ve been staring at my chips for 3 days now while working in the basement on cleanup and painting and such.

As I determine my final, personal forever sets, I’m selling off everything chip wise that I don’t see being used in the future and finishing anything remaining.

The small group of chipsets I plan to hold forever are a mix, preset combo set to relabel to mixed, so I can’t pick one. I will say that I’ve never once actually finished a project or nonstandard set, so there’s that.

 

[Kam]

Looks like I’m in the minority, don’t really consider myself a ‘collector’ though, except I like the cohesive sets. Have made one RHC mixed relabel set and have 2 complete NAGBs and rotate the sets to get them in play, so guess I’m 2:1 preset to mixed.

Outside of a few samples that mean something to me, don’t really ‘collect’ singles though.

 

[mipevi]

While owning nice casino chips has always brought me some satisfaction, I’ve come to realize that the real fun is custom designs and being able to act on them. I think about some of the greats on here and can think of some who seems to do one more than the other and I really find myself drawn towards the energy that exists around custom designs.

This 100%. The hunt can be fun, but the real joy I find in doing custom designs. I've done both from the start, and still do.

 

[FestiveKnight]

This 100%. The hunt can be fun, but the real joy I find in doing custom designs. I've done both from the start, and still do.

Well and that’s where I wonder if it’s about how I’ve gone about the hunt on ghe collecting side. Which is to say that except for a few relatively quickly abandoned projects, I mostly just threw money at the problem.

I wonder how much my approach on such things was influenced by joining the forum at the height of the WW era when him and others were speeding up the desire -> acquisition window but increasing offer prices.

I’ve really not done one of the chip by chip builds that I have so much respect for but maybe not the patience for. But would that “project” make the end result feel more fulfilling? I assume so

 

[BarrieJ3]

I wish that Paulson relabels had more support. Like sure, picking out your colors and spots is great, but 90% of cpc sets that come out look like a prior one.

And the topics are always family vacation, faux casino, childhood upbringing, endearing personal memento of love and happiness - awesome and quite a few are fantastic.

But…where’s the ice cream truck set?

Or let’s get a ToeJam and Earl tribute!

Rugrats, Tron, Dunes, so many cool things that could use current Paulsons.

Writing this out loud, I’m realizing that Tina is where all the “for fun” ideas have gone. Dang.

 

[mipevi]

I have many long projects, spanning over several years. If it's really about the journey, why rush to completion?

 

[FestiveKnight]

Writing this out loud, I’m realizing that Tina is where all the “for fun” ideas have gone. Dang.

And that’s gonna be several factors. With the price of THCs so high, hard to justify a meme set and on top of that it’s hard to find chips to fit those themes.

So ya, Tinas make sense as a go-to for “off” themes. And that’s probably okay? A cheaper, more flexible option that doesn’t require a bunch of manual labor, waiting for labels, etc.

 

[BarrieJ3]

And that’s gonna be several factors. With the price of THCs so high, hard to justify a meme set and on top of that it’s hard to find chips to fit those themes.

So ya, Tinas make sense as a go-to for “off” themes. And that’s probably okay? A cheaper, more flexible option that doesn’t require a bunch of manual labor, waiting for labels, etc.

100%. Wasn’t dogging em, and totally makes sense.

But then again, given the cost I don’t think CPCs make sense either

If Paulson relabels were more common, it would perpetuate itself as well. Cause there’d be greater demand for murdered or relabeled chips because they’d just be relabeled anyways.

The chipping world needs some more of these projects!

 

[SteveEH]

I'm in the minority. I'm not a collector, I don't like to have a lot of stuff, so I only have my two custom sets with themes that mean a lot to me.

I stick around to see the custom sets that others come up with. Not the "YourName's Casino/Poker Room/Care Club" sets (like my first ASM set), the ones with meaningful themes that are lifelong sets.

 

[LeLe]

I think I am 2/3 Collector & 1/3 Hobbyist.

Pure Collector in my earlier days and Mixed towards the later part of my chipping days.

I been away for a while and wanting to do/finish some of my projects in the past but the market seems to be pretty dry for those type of sales (I guessing a lack of TCR sales contributed to that)

All what I mostly seem are overpriced set and half-finish projects in Classified now

 

[GGHank]

I put hobbyist, but I would say there is a spectrum within that and I'm more of a "casual" hobbyist. I've got dice chips. I like lurking around on here and seeing the awesome sets this community puts together. I host a micro-stakes home game once a month. I'm slowly learning some graphic design to make a fun little Tina set with my dog's faces on them.

Frankly with the cost of my other hobbies and the prices of CPC and Paulsons I don't think I'll ever own a "nice" set of those and I'm just fine with that (though they are pretty to look at). I could see myself making a few Tina sets in the future depending on what inspires me and how my home game grows, and they would be fully customized by me. Even if they don't turn out that great, the fun of it for me is taking an idea and getting creative, learning a new skill (design) and having something tangible at the end that's unique and personal and didn't cost that much.

Maybe that's a similar feeling for others and all that separates a "casual" hobbyist as I call myself and what I would consider a serious hobbyist is being willing to spend the money to get minty Paulsons and do a full relabel project, put together a mixed set of rare chips, collecting other custom sets that I think are neat, etc.

 

[Old State]

I stumbled across this forum 10 years ago searching the internet on safe ways to clean my ASM chips. I assumed this website would have been 99% custom chips.
Prior to that if someone told me they collected chips I would have thought singles from famous casinos. I had zero clue people bought entire sets of casino chips to actually play with. I didn’t even think there was a market to acquire or sell them in bulk.