I am currently contemplating the Atlantic Club hot stamps from
CPC. For a few years down the road or if I come into some surprise money. I just got finished topping off my Milanos so can't justify it for a while. But they seem like one of the most affordable ways to get some real nice clay into your hands.
I love Milanos for tournaments. Cheap enough I have a ton and can be generous with chip counts. I start with 5s for multi-rebuy tournaments; I start with 25s for 1-rebuy tournaments, and I start with 100s for freezouts. Some of my players get cranky about using the 5s, even the 25s sometimes. Chip inflation, I tell you.
The Royals have a nice size and feel to them, I am just not a fan of some of the color choices. Yellow 1,000 and Orange 5,000 right in a row is weird, and I'm not a fan of the white 500. The rest of them are all nice though. If I were to make a set of Royals I would sub in the light blue 25c for the white 500 (just buy them both and switch the labels). And also sub in the pink 100K for the orange 5K (again just buy them both and switch the labels).
Actually, that Royals set is sounding nice now with those little changes! I would probably relabel the 25Ks to 20K cause I'm just weird. (I find 20K to be more useful than 25K in both color ups and in deep stack starting stacks.)
If you want a numbers breakdown maybe something like:
300 x 25
300 x 100
120 x 500
220 x 1000
120 x 5K
40 x 25K (or 20K)
That's 1100 chips. It would be enough for 24 players 10K stacks starting with 25s x 12, with plenty of higher chips for rebuys; or 18 players 60K deep stack freezout starting with 100s x 15.
On my Milano set I have over 2,000, because I like variety as mentioned above. I also use the dark blue for 5K instead of the pinks and relabel the orange 10K to 20k instead.
Hope that gives you some ideas. 3 good candidates for your tournament set