Key West quality (1 Viewer)

Hey, I'm new to the poker chip world. I'm looking for real casino grade chips and the only ones I can find are the Cincinnati horseshoe which is cool but I wanit to see if there's more. does anyone know any besides Paulson that I can order?
if not should I go to custom?
but what's the difference between custom and stock are the better quality or just cooler because they have your name on them?
can I get casino grade customs or is that not a thing?
I'm also only looking for 500ish chips
 
Welcome to the forums! Firstly, get samples.

Apachepokerchips.com has some other paulson sets as well as matsui and bud jones.

There are also these: https://www.pokerchipforum.com/thre...open-now-and-until-final-stock-is-sold.64385/

For new casino grade clay chips your choices are key west (cpc chips) or cpc stock or custom. You can also keep an eye on the classifieds here where cool sets pop up for sale quite often. Be ready to pull the trigger fast though.

You can also go ceramic either through brpropoker.com or sunfly (both site vendors), both produce awesome chips, stock or custom.
 
No quality difference between CPC customs and stock chips like they Key Wests are. It's only the design.

The design however has more implications than just the looks.
If you buy stock chips, someone else can simply go and purchase a few of the same stock chips and smuggle them into your game. Dangerous for cash games. If you go custom, it's not that easy. CPC will not make exact replicas of another customer's chips as far as I know. And even if they did, it'd cost so much that it will usually not be worth the investment for a would-be cheat. (Minimum order quantity + cost of a chip vs. how much you can make with the chips you are able to smuggle into a game before it's detected and countermeasures are taken)
 
As others have said, the quality is top notch. The biggest issue I have with them are the design choices of the colors and edge spots. The $20 chip base uses DG Saturn, which should never be used on any chip as a base color in my opinion. You can design your own set, choosing your own colors and inlay design and can choose from several different molds for basically the same price from CPC. To me, it's a no-brainer to just design your own. You'll have to wait a few months to get your order filled though. Another option would be to go with the stock Rounders chips from the movie if you want the same quality chips that are off the shelf and ready to ship. You can get those directly from CPC and they're replicas of the same chips that were used in the movie. That's tough to beat if you're going with mass production chips that aren't designed by you.
 
Custom and semi-custom chips have the highest security value for your game. Ex-casino have a little bit less, depending on how much is out there in circulation. Stock chips have little to no security, since they are mass produced and easily available to anyone.
I think it’s also good to add where you based at. For example , I’m based in the Netherlands Europe , and I’ve I have cpc/ Paulson chips in play there will be a very little chance that players will get their hands on them and sneak them in here cause they’re really rare chips here in Europe. Theoretically there always be a chance, but knowing you’re players / game participants will also help in trusting them.
 
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Hey, I'm new to the poker chip world. I'm looking for real casino grade chips and the only ones I can find are the Cincinnati horseshoe which is cool but I wanit to see if there's more. does anyone know any besides Paulson that I can order?
if not should I go to custom?
but what's the difference between custom and stock are the better quality or just cooler because they have your name on them?
can I get casino grade customs or is that not a thing?
I'm also only looking for 500ish chips
Not comparing key west chips to Paulsons here because these two differ from one to another in several ways. But as I have received my samples today from Dennis I can only say that key west are very good quality chips. They are harder than Paulsons in some way and the sound is a higher pitch , im sure this will also be the case with CPC chips because key west are made by CPC. They’re lighter as well but still feel premium and not cheap. For example you can have a cheap nextgen chip that weights 8 grams and a key west chip that weights the same but how they feel is completely different! The key west feel like a premium handmade chip and the nextgen just feel cheap. So the lighter weight is personal preference and the design too , I think it’s a timeless design with key west and less bright colors but however still beautiful and appealing. Both are very grippy and stack like bricks. It’s personal preference, I do think that key west/ CPC chips will be less prone to flea bites than Paulsons due to the harder material and will take longer to break in.
Both amazing. High end plastics is a option too if you like them , these chips are way more durable than clays however minty clays will last a lifetime with proper caring imo
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Key wests are fantastic. The H mold can have spinners from the mold. It's well known, but I'll also state I have 2000 h mold chips and it has not been an issue for me. I've been tempted to rebuy a set.
Love the mold and Key West line but unfortunately I had a very high percentage of spinners.
I would try to get a least a 20pc barrel to sample before buying a full set.
 
Love the mold and Key West line but unfortunately I had a very high percentage of spinners.
I would try to get a least a 20pc barrel to sample before buying a full set.
Yeah, I've heard of the issues for a while, but I have been lucky. No issues with either of my H mold sets, but I'd be lying if it wasn't a known issue.
 
Yeah, I've heard of the issues for a while, but I have been lucky. No issues with either of my H mold sets, but I'd be lying if it wasn't a known issue.
Meh. Spinners happen. I was cleaning some Paulson hot stamps the other day, when I identified a spinner just by how it felt in my hand. Weed them out. Or flatten them. Or just have fun spinning the top half of your stack.
 
Meh. Spinners happen. I was cleaning some Paulson hot stamps the other day, when I identified a spinner just by how it felt in my hand. Weed them out. Or flatten them. Or just have fun spinning the top half of your stack.
Honestly, they never bothered me as long as stacks stay up. It's a custom hand made item, it's apart of the personality of what your requesting.
 
H mold is more prone to spinners than certain other molds.

I own a set of well over 3500 chips and had plenty of spinners among them - in fact so many that I could make a mini set out of them (with inlays removed and replaced by labels). On the other hand, I have another ~3500 FDL chips, and while a bunch of them had inlays that did not quite stick to the clay, none of them were "spinners" in the way that they would make stacks wobbly.

If the inlay is a little recessed, like with the FDL mold, the inlays can be slightly convex and still not cause issues in practical use.
 
Honestly, they never bothered me as long as stacks stay up. It's a custom hand made item, it's apart of the personality of what your requesting.
Yeah this was my issue and stacks were unstable. Out of 200 red KW chips I experienced 50% spinners which I viewed as unacceptable. I have 3 other custom CPC/ASM sets with maybe 1 spinner out of over 2000 chips. I'm aware that many other people, maybe most, wouldn't find these particular chips as unacceptable and I'm also very much aware of most of the factors that could create spinners and the variables are many i.e mold wear, inlay size, operator training etc etc. That being said, I really like the KW design and affordability and would recommend them IF you can accept that spinners are not considered defective. (As w any set) I was unable to make that acceptance.
I also realized my experience w KW chips are the exception and not the norm and posting something contrary to popular belief may also be unsettling to some.
 
Personally, spinners are an absolute deal breaker to me. I'd rather play with super diamonds than clay spinners. I guess I'll cross that H mold off my to do list. Damn.
 
Personally, spinners are an absolute deal breaker to me. I'd rather play with super diamonds than clay spinners. I guess I'll cross that H mold off my to do list. Damn.
To me as well. Bummer, I was toying with the idea of doing a Sahara set on the h-mold and complete it with some of Apache’s plaques :(
 
I should add that I got the spinners replaced by CPC.

Also, it appeared like they didn't come as spinners from the factory, but turned into spinners during transport.

By tracing the path the chips took, we concluded that they must have been transported in an (unheated) cargo compartment on a plane when they came from the UK to me. Usually, when stuff is shipped via USPS straight from the US, they'll fill up empty storage space in the (heated) luggage compartments of regular passenger flights.

The chips are sensitive to heat, so why not also to freezing. Given material expands/contracts under different temperatures, and vacuum suction effect being all there really is to the inlays sticking to the chip, I can well imagine that the extreme swing in ambient temperature killed the vacuum. I also noticed that spinners only appeared in the barrels that were situated close to the walls of the parcels, while those closer to the center were fine - which further solidified our presumption. I also tested this with one good chip which I put out on the balcony overnight in freezing temperatures. Next day I came back and it was a spinner.
 
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I should add that I got the spinners replaced by CPC.

Also, it appeared like they didn't come as spinners from the factory, but turned into spinners during transport.

By tracing the path the chips took, we concluded that they must have been transported in an (unheated) cargo compartment on a plane when they came from the UK to me. Usually, when stuff is shipped via USPS straight from the US, they'll fill up empty storage space in the (heated) luggage compartments of regular passenger flights.

The chips are sensitive to heat, so why not also to freezing. Given material expands/contracts under different temperatures, and vacuum suction effect being all there really is to the inlays sticking to the chip, I can well imagine that the extreme swing in ambient temperature killed the vacuum. I also noticed that spinners only appeared in the barrels that were situated close to the walls of the parcels, while those closer to the center were fine - which further solidified our presumption. I also tested this with one good chip which I put out on the balcony overnight in freezing temperatures. Next day I came back and it was a spinner.

This doesn't explain though why numerous other people report having spinner issues with the H mold much more so than other molds. I wonder why that is?
 
Maybe some people store the chips in their garage or otherwise subject them to freezing temperatures - even if just for a short time. Or the chips were delivered during a time where it was very cold outside. Delivery trucks aren't really insulated, at least not the kind we have here. And I think dropping parcels off on the porch is commonplace in the US, where they could sit for hours until picked up and brought inside.
 
I am not sure if Dennis himself will be posting here but he has been in contact with me regarding the '50% spinners' claim above.
He informs me that there were only 15-20 chips replaced out of the entire order (the entire order, not just the $5's) and that he even videotaped himself proving the chips (which were at one point returned) were not spinners after all. That video was sent to the buyer.
 
Given some of the comments above, I believe I do need to address this.

As David mentions above, any claim that anyone received "50 percent spinners" in an order is not true. I have extensive notes on that order, and my dealings with the customer in that 2015 order.

There were some spinners in the order, likely due to some extremes in temperature, humidity or pressure during shipping. All the chips in the order were fine before they were shipped. When the customer returned 95 chips claiming all were spinners, they were tested again and most did not spin. I eventually asked Classic to send chips directly to the customer, who also got a full refund for all chips except for 200 x $1 blue chips in his order which he eventually sold to another member.

Key West quality control:

Step 1: Classic Poker Chips quality control:


Every chip is inspected by Classic Poker Chips prior to them being shipped to me. David would know more about exactly what is done in this phase of quality control, but the results are excellent, and speak for themselves.

Chips are received at Key West / Continental:

Step 2: Cleaning:


I send cases of 1,000 chips at a time to be hand-cleaned at a local service. The chips are wiped with a damp cloth, then a dry cloth.

Step 3: Appearance check:

When the chips return from being cleaned, I check every chip. The rolling edges of each barrel of 20 chips are examined for flaws. The front and back faces are scanned for visible flaws or damage. Any chips that don't pass this visual screening are pulled out.

Any chips pulled out in the process above are cleaned, in case the flaw is simply dirt on the chip, rather than an actual flaw.

Step 4: Spin test:

Each barrel of chips is quickly broken down into stacks of five to get an accurate count in each box. I then make stacks of 10 chips and attempt to spin each stack of 10 on a glass plate. If there are any spinners in those ten chips, it's immediately obvious. Any chip that spins is pulled out and discarded.

The chips are boxed again, and labels are applied to the boxes to indicate that the chips are ready for sale.

The chips can then be shipped out to customers.

Guarantee:

Finally, if a customer receives a chip they find unacceptable, they may return the chip or chips for a full refund. I have always offered this, and still plan to do so in 2021.

Opinions about Key West chips:

I understand and respect anyone here who posts that they may not like Key West chips. I offer the chips in order to keep this line of chips alive and available to people like me who like the chips and want to be able to buy more in the future. I'm not trying to compete with Paulson / GPI, or to corner the market here.

As in any business, there are difficult customers. Worldwide, there are perhaps 10 people with whom I refuse to deal because they tried to rip me off, or because they created contrived complaints to save money on their chips, or tried to parlay an actual complaint into free chips, refunds, or something that got very close to extortion. Sometimes, I've refunded entire orders and just told the customer to "get lost."

Those folks are out there. Please be aware of that, too.

It's still very, very rare to have a problem with an order. Here are the numbers:

To date, between opening in 2012 and December, 2020, Continental Card & Game Co. has sold over 44,000 Key West chips to 502 customers in 27 countries worldwide.
  • 66 people ordered twice
  • 13 people ordered 3 times
  • 8 people ordered 4 times
  • 6 people ordered 5 times
  • 1 person ordered 6 times
  • 1 person ordered 9 times
  • 1 person ordered 10 times
The quality of Key West and other Classic Poker Chips speaks for itself and the evidence is all over the world right now.

As this is not my thread, I will not be commenting here further.
 
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I have 1600 Key West chips...from several sources incl. chip that came from @Meddler2

My set is perfect as is, has seen plenty of play (and I rotate racks that doesn't get used weekly).
Not a single chip that I can fault in my batch of 1600...and they can stand the abuse of my players a lot better then my once minty Paulsons.

All I know is that CPC & Key West both take pride in their product...and they back that up with a A+++ customer service.
 
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To clarify:
50% of my entire kw order did not contain spinners; however 50% of the red 200 chips within the order did. Also, I could be wrong but prior to my issues back in November 2015, I don't believe a spin test was performed on every single chip. I was told that to check for spinners, the method used was to "examine the chip for any gaps in the stacks of 20 in the boxes, as this is an easy alert to a spinners and those chips are removed".
At any rate, I stand by my statement as evident by me returning 95 of 200 red key west chips due to being spinners. As Dennis mentioned above the rest of my order was fine.
I also used nearly the same spin test technique to identify the chips as KW now does. I have no explanation as to why my counter top produced the extreme high number of spinners in the 200pc lot vs Dennis test which did not.
I did not start out looking for spinners in my set. It only became necessary as I immediately noticed unstable barrel stacks upon unpacking the chips. As mentioned previously, I have 3 custom sets from ASM/CPC and are pretty much free of any defects; which is why discovering so many spinners within a subset of my kw set was surprising.
 
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