This is a semi-long story, so feel free to scroll down to the cliffs and the few photos I have provided so far.
*This thread is for an unfinished product, and will be updated as new progress is made.*
Naturally as soon as I started receiving some casino sets in the mail, I took a gander at all of the custom sets being made by people around here and thought it would be cool to do some day. I didn't really have a theme in mind, and that's always been my problem with creating theoretical custom sets. If I'm going to pour a bunch of money into customs, I wanted it to be something with personal meaning instead of just a random design I thought was cool.
My wife's favorite person in the world was her late grandfather, whose name is Harold. She tells me all the time that I am very much like him in a lot of ways. One of those ways happens to be an affinity for poker. I moved with my wife to her childhood hometown from the big city so we could be closer to her family. It's a pretty small town, and the nearest casino with live poker is about 2 hours away. There isn't much gambling here, outside of a few home games that are kept pretty private among friends and family.
We play small poker games with her family and a couple of friends, 5 cent ante dealer's choice around the dining room table. We use paper cards, and actual nickels, dimes and quarters for chips. Buy in is usually about $5 per person, no more than 6 people. I was an addition to this game that has been running since before I was around, and I didn't want to be the one to make suggestions to upgrade what we were playing with. I was told this is how they always did it. Eventually my wife revealed to me that her grandfather did in fact have an old set of chips (most likely plastic) that he used for poker nights with his friends and family. This was my in, and the opening I was looking for to introduce chips into this game. Not only that, my mother-in-law bought a round folding poker table from a friend, and while it's not fancy it has a felt playing surface and some padding.
So that led me in wondering which direction to go in. I wanted to make something that had meaning, and present it as a gift to my wife's parents for use in their games with us. I had seen some old Harold's chips before (Harold's For Fun) but putting together a set of those would be expensive, and putting chips like that into play for small stakes would always make me a little nervous. Full customs are expensive, and for this game would be a bit overkill. There's always ceramic which is a little cheaper, or labeling some plastic chips or even china clays would be an option too.
Someone here posted that they found a lot of 395 milled ASM H-mold chips on eBay, and the seller eventually came forward on here as well. Harold's chips also used this manufacturer and mold at one point, so this seemed like as good of a spot as any to pick up some cheaper chips and make something personal for my wife's family (...ok and for myself.) I scooped them up, and they've just been sitting in my office for a while in chip boxes. I still wasn't sure about an inlay and I hadn't run the idea by my wife yet. Hey if she didn't like the idea, more chips for me!
We got to talking about it and she loved the idea. She told me more about her grandfather, and said he used to play in a private game located in a smoke shop here in town (which may or may not still have games.) I had my theme, and the idea of Harold's Smoke Shop was born.
This will be continued with a 2nd post a little while later. I have some more information to share and even an inlay mockup. Thanks for reading!
Cliffs:
- Envious of custom chips
- Play in a game with paper cards and actual change used
- Wanted custom chips as a gift for my in-laws to use in this game
- Found cheap milled ASM chips I could label
- Developed an idea around my wife's grandfather
- Harold's Smoke Shop
- More to come
*This thread is for an unfinished product, and will be updated as new progress is made.*
Naturally as soon as I started receiving some casino sets in the mail, I took a gander at all of the custom sets being made by people around here and thought it would be cool to do some day. I didn't really have a theme in mind, and that's always been my problem with creating theoretical custom sets. If I'm going to pour a bunch of money into customs, I wanted it to be something with personal meaning instead of just a random design I thought was cool.
My wife's favorite person in the world was her late grandfather, whose name is Harold. She tells me all the time that I am very much like him in a lot of ways. One of those ways happens to be an affinity for poker. I moved with my wife to her childhood hometown from the big city so we could be closer to her family. It's a pretty small town, and the nearest casino with live poker is about 2 hours away. There isn't much gambling here, outside of a few home games that are kept pretty private among friends and family.
We play small poker games with her family and a couple of friends, 5 cent ante dealer's choice around the dining room table. We use paper cards, and actual nickels, dimes and quarters for chips. Buy in is usually about $5 per person, no more than 6 people. I was an addition to this game that has been running since before I was around, and I didn't want to be the one to make suggestions to upgrade what we were playing with. I was told this is how they always did it. Eventually my wife revealed to me that her grandfather did in fact have an old set of chips (most likely plastic) that he used for poker nights with his friends and family. This was my in, and the opening I was looking for to introduce chips into this game. Not only that, my mother-in-law bought a round folding poker table from a friend, and while it's not fancy it has a felt playing surface and some padding.
So that led me in wondering which direction to go in. I wanted to make something that had meaning, and present it as a gift to my wife's parents for use in their games with us. I had seen some old Harold's chips before (Harold's For Fun) but putting together a set of those would be expensive, and putting chips like that into play for small stakes would always make me a little nervous. Full customs are expensive, and for this game would be a bit overkill. There's always ceramic which is a little cheaper, or labeling some plastic chips or even china clays would be an option too.
Someone here posted that they found a lot of 395 milled ASM H-mold chips on eBay, and the seller eventually came forward on here as well. Harold's chips also used this manufacturer and mold at one point, so this seemed like as good of a spot as any to pick up some cheaper chips and make something personal for my wife's family (...ok and for myself.) I scooped them up, and they've just been sitting in my office for a while in chip boxes. I still wasn't sure about an inlay and I hadn't run the idea by my wife yet. Hey if she didn't like the idea, more chips for me!
We got to talking about it and she loved the idea. She told me more about her grandfather, and said he used to play in a private game located in a smoke shop here in town (which may or may not still have games.) I had my theme, and the idea of Harold's Smoke Shop was born.
This will be continued with a 2nd post a little while later. I have some more information to share and even an inlay mockup. Thanks for reading!
Cliffs:
- Envious of custom chips
- Play in a game with paper cards and actual change used
- Wanted custom chips as a gift for my in-laws to use in this game
- Found cheap milled ASM chips I could label
- Developed an idea around my wife's grandfather
- Harold's Smoke Shop
- More to come