Identify, please…Are these Paranoids? (5 Viewers)

PokerDogDoc

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Saw this listing on eBay for “vintage clay poker chips” with a ring design reminiscent of a biohazard symbol:
3073E9F3-A586-44E4-A337-464A2D95E2BA.jpeg

https://www.ebay.com/itm/105-Vintag...p2349624.m46890.l6249&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0

They look like clay Paranoid / inlay chips, but I’ve never seen this design before and the green and blue colors seem wrong to me for that era.

The price seems a little steep at 50¢ a piece, but I can't find any others anywhere on the interwebs for comparison, either.

If not vintage, are these from a modern company making these?… if so, I may be into getting a cash game set!
 
Well, what do you know?
I happened to find this photo from an early 1900s price list (1908?) on a different thread here on PCF that confirms these are, indeed, Paranoid inlaid “three-ring design” chips.

I’m gonna snap these up…. If anyone has any in their closet they want to sell, or knows where I can get more, please let me know!

46644F48-16F4-4A78-AD50-0CF0DD02504F.jpeg
 
We've taken to calling this style of chip Paranoid, and that's probably a fine thing to continue doing, but recently we've learned more about the history of these kinds of chips such that in some cases "Paranoid" is perhaps not strictly speaking correct.

Paranoid is the brand name that USPCC used for the material that some of their chips were made out of. It's almost certainly a blend of plastic (probably celluloid) and other stuff, including clay. USPCC made at least two different lines of Paranoid chips - Paranoid Inlaid (with symbols, numbers, and letters) and Paranoid Engraved (with various line-drawing designs, including the chips in my avatar picture).

The inlaid symbol chips are what we're usually talking about when we say Paranoid nowadays, because they're ubiquitous and distinctive. They're compression-molded clay chips (Paranoid is the same type of material that we nowadays would call "clay"). They're made using die-cut inlays: a big sheet of colored thin plastic had the symbols cut out of them with a stamp (a "die"), then the symbols were placed on top of the blank clay slug inside the press. The press pressed the symbols into the surface of the chip while heating the chip to cure and set the plastic.

Here's a picture showing what the die-cut inlays look like relative to the chips they were used in:

tsippi-jpg.539928


Now, here's where it gets fun. In the 1940s, Burt Co purchased chip-making equipment from USPCC, including the dies that they used to cut out the symbols for their Paranoid Inlaid line of chips. After that, Burt Co continued making inlaid symbol chips using the USPCC dies (and thus the same USPCC symbols) BUT they made the chips using their own molds, presses, and clay formulas. And at some point, those molds and formulas were no longer the same as what USPCC had used in earlier days.

So, some time after the purchase, we had symbol chips that looked like the old USPCC Paranoid chips, but were made like Burt chips. Which means they weren't made from the same material, which was called Paranoid.

So. Technically the chips you just bought aren't "Paranoid" because they aren't made from the same material that USPCC called by that name. I'm pretty sure that these are Burt chips because they're square-edged and thick. BUT we've been calling this kind of inlaid symbol chip "Paranoid" for a long time, and perhaps it's not really a mistake to keep doing so.

Anyway, I think they're pretty cool chips. Good luck finding more with the same design! You'll probably need a good bit of diligence and patience.

This thread summarizes most of what we know about these chips; well worth reading if you liked them enough to buy the lot on eBay.
 
Thanks @CrazyEddie … I had already read some of your previous threads on these vintage chips (and the ones you particularly love) but always good to add that stuff here for others to stumble across, too.

Interesting that you feel that since they are thick and square edged that they must be Burt chips… and you may be right as they would certainly need to be made on a different machine than chips with rounded edges.

Names don't really accurately represent material composition, anyway
… and your point is well taken, @allforcharity !
 
35128B1A-6AB7-4F57-A55A-2EA351A2FCD7.jpeg
Updated pic on unpacking day… this is a much better representation of the true chip colors.

Such a great feel to these vintage clay chips! And the seller also tossed in some “bonus” chips he had laying around.

Now I REALLY want to find more of these!
 
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Updated pic on unpacking day… this is a much better representation of the true chip colors.

Such a great feel to these vintage clay chips! And the seller also tossed in some “bonus” chips he had laying around.

Now I REALLY want to find more of these!
Beautiful! After reading the post by @CrazyEddie , those look more like old Burt clays than paranoid plastic. Great find!
 
A bit of an update on these (and other vintage clay inlaid chips) regarding square vs rounded edges from @David Spragg, owner of Classic Poker Chips which was originally known as the Burt Company:

@David SpraggThey were sold as roulette chips. They could have been made at USPC or Burt Co. Both did possess square edge molds and almost every distributor offered them (mostly to illegal clubs).
They could date back anywhere from the 1930's to 1960's. They were extremely common back then but most would have either not survived that long or were confiscated from clubs and destroyed.
I have no idea where you would ever find others.

David
 
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USPCC and Burt did both have square-edge molds. I get the impression that the Burt molds were thicker than the USPCC molds, but honestly I don't have any good evidence of that; I could pull out my samples and see if I have any with square edges that are thinner than modern chips.

The three-ring design does show up now and then on eBay. A few designs are more common but even the unusual ones do get listed. So probably your best bet is to keep an eye on eBay and slog through the listings for "antique poker chips" every now and then.

If I happen to spot any I'll let you know!
 
I think I have a shipping box or three of other paranoids if you want more. I don't think I have the three rings but let me know if you're interested.
Yes! Message me with some pics! Maybe I can find something that I like and that would complement mine.

…(and that was an amazing collection you had!)
 
I had a really great set of these I sold when I got a Jack bj set. I regret it, these were fantastic compared to the jacks.
Those boxes say "Scottie" but I guess they all just contained Sunray? The Scottie die-cut symbol is pretty cute!

s-l1600.jpg
 
Maybe I can find something that I like and that would complement mine.

That may be how you have to build out a playable set of these. Instead of getting all one symbol (since I think three-rings is probably fairly uncommon) you may want to pick up a few different symbols that work together - for whatever that means to your own aesthetic sensibilities.

Here's a few examples, but this is by no means complete:
http://chipguide.themogh.org/cg_uspc_pix.php?id=Sample Chips-6
http://chipguide.themogh.org/cg_uspc_pix.php?id=Sample chips-5
http://chipguide.themogh.org/cg_uspc_pix.php?id=Sample chips-1
 
That’s what I’m thinking, @CrazyEddie. I’ve been looking for the Geometric (circle-triangle) but those are also rare in large numbers; and the 3 Comets which are more common, but again, large lots at a decent price are tough to find.

… the hunt continues.
 
Here's a few more examples grabbed off of eBay listings, just to give you more ideas about what you might be able to find, eventually:

s-l500.png


s-l1600.jpg



And a brochure that @gmunny acquired:

51009625031_4ba9619dcf_z.jpg


I know I've seen each of those above designs on eBay at least once, although rarely in any substantial quantity.

Good hunting!
 
These types of chips were listed in quite a few of the older catalogs that I have including those from Mason, KC Card Co, TR King, etc. I'll post a few pages when i have a second.
 
I have a little bit more information on the history of the USPC/Burt./RT "Paranoid" type square and round edge inlaid chips.

As already pointed out, both the square edge and round edge versions were made by the USPC Co., but the earliest catalog that Dale Seymour list for Paranoid inlaid chips going back to 1895, offers just square edged chips. There were likely round edge inlaid Paranoids from this time period, but the square edge ones go back pretty much just as far as the round edge ones. (see arrows)

1632883509091.jpg


The square edge paranoid chips were always seen as being superior to the rounded edge paranoid chips, and sold at a premium price. They actually weigh a little bit more, and are a little bit thicker than the rounded edge chips. They are closer in dimension to modern compression clay chips.

Below is a crappy picture (sorry) of another catalog from about 1910. It offers both "Round Edge" and "Thick Square Edge" inlaid paranoids. The square edge ones are more expensive. See arrow.

1632883936630.jpg


As others have pointed out, Burt produced these after 1947. My impression is that gradually over time, more and more of these were square edged, because people saw them as superior. Catalogs claimed that dealers could more easily and precisely cut stacks of the square edge chips.

At some point in the early or mid 1980s, I think RT Plastics in Los Angeles began to make a plastic version of these chips. One of the owners of RT plastics, was one of two people to buy Langworthy in 1986. They renamed it Langworthy Casino Supply and the @gmunny catalog page is from that period. They sourced a lot of their chips from RT Plastics. At first glance these roulette chips appear identical to the compressed clay inlaid Paranoid chips, but the minute you pick them up you realize that they are very different. The die cut inlay is an illusion, as they are completely flat, with no change in surface texture or ridge between the "inlay" and the rest of the chip.

Below are three die cut paranoid imitations. You can tell that there is something funny about the top two chips. The inserts are identical, and not real inserts. The white inlays are fake, too. The RT made red chip below them is the same, but it is almost impossible to tell without seeing it in person.


1632885227611.png
 
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Awesome as always, Jeff!

Regarding the RT Plastics "fake paranoids" (for lack of a better term) - how do you think the "inlays" were produced? Ordinarily when looking at an injection-molded chip like that I'd expect monocolor designs to be part of the mold, but if they were offering them with multiple different symbols that would require a different mold for each different symbol, which would be an exceptional expense for a manufacturer of plastic chips. My next guess would be that they're screen-printed; you can sometimes find screen printing on various low-price chips. You can usually feel screen printing, though; the ink is pretty thick, and there's a slight but still quite noticeable transition between the ink and the bare chip, depending I suppose on how sensitive your fingertips are.

Interesting that the square-edged USPCC inlaid chips were thicker than the round-edged chips. I wonder if Burt used the same molds (presumably part of the USPCC purchase) and made the same thick chips throughout their life, such that that became the "standard" thickness of chips from that point forward, with later debossed compression molds being made to match the same thickness of the plain molds used for square-edged Paranoids.
 
I'm not sure how RT was able to do that, but probably using the same technique that they used to create the fake inserts on the top two chips. My phone camera is not good enough to catch this, but the "fake paranoid" chip is very lightly textured, and the texture is the same on the "inlay" as it is on the rest of the chip. Most die-cut Paranoids are not textured at all, and if they are, the inlay is still not textured.

However, looking more closely at Gmunny's Langworthy page, there is one thing that makes me think that these may still have been Burt/ASM produced chips. The page states that they are "Available in All Horsehead Chip Colors". Langworthy in the 1980s sold Burt/ASM made chips on the HHR mold. If the colors of those chips match the HHR chips, that makes me think that they may still be Burt/ASM made chips. So RT may have sold the plastic chips I have elsewhere or made them a bit later.
 
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Wow, all good stuff here gang. I love all this chip history!

I also find it interesting that most of these early chips were not sold as poker chips, but as Poker Wheel, Faro, or Roulette chips… since casinos (both legal and illegal) were the main purchaser of chips, and those were the games popular during the late 19th and early 20th century.

I suspect poker actually played in casinos is a relatively modern development.
 
I'm under the impression that roulette and faro (and dice games, I suspect) were initially the popular games, and the games of choice of the itinerant gambler during the westward expansion in the 1800s, but that poker did in fact become enormously popular during the late 1800s at the very least. I think that by the early 1900s private gambling clubs had become widespread and that poker was a fixture within them, along with roulette and dice (and faro, but its popularity was declining).

However, this is just my impression from the small bit of reading I've done. I haven't specifically researched the subject.

The motivated inquirer might look to books that were written during that period and which discussed the gambling trade of the time. Quite a number of those books were sold as part of the Eisenstadt estate auction, and the auction catalog serves as a bibliography for further research: https://www.potterauctions.com/pdf/catalog_95web.pdf
 

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