Market situations.... (1 Viewer)

ChipsGetMePumped

ChipsGetMePumped

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I always wondered what would happen to the chip prices if Paulson's got back into the home market and started making chips again for the general consumer? Anyone know or have any good insight?????
 
1653159889718.gif
 
This fantasy idea has been discussed at length before so that is why you are getting the kind of responses you are.

First and foremost, your wish is extremely unlikely. I'm not going to say impossible, but let's say 1 notch away from impossible. Paulson/GPI has been convinced by its real customers (actual casinos and card rooms) that for security reasons they should not sell to the public. Unfortunately it probably didn't take a whole lot of convincing because we were such a small segment of their business that we were almost inconsequential. Retail sales to customers like us are at most just a few percent of their total business.

If, in the infantesimally small chance they change their policy, large collections of playable sets would undoubtedly crash in value.
 
As others have said (and will say), GPI isn't going to sell to the home market. In the hypothetical scenario that they did, the main question would be how much customization do they make available? Can we order anything that we want, or will it be like in the past where they had certain set designs that you could choose from? The most likely market effects would be:

1. Prices in general would drop.
2. The prices of NAGB would drop dramatically
3. TRKs, leaded and shaped inlay THCs, and chips with history/notoriety (ex: WSOP Binion's), would likely hold most of their value or possibly increase. Part of collecting is people want scarce/rare items, so any chips that couldn't be replaced or replicated (i.e. TRKs) would at least see their value hold.
 
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In the almost-certainly-never-going-to-happen-and-you-can-bet-your-house-on-it eventuality that Paulson starts selling to the home market again, they'll make home chips exclusively on their crappy molds, maybe even making a brand new crappy mold just for that purpose. The market value of THCs and even RHCs, including both retired casino sets and the various custom sets like Aurora Star and Royal Princess Casino, will be completely unaffected. The people buying those sets aren't interested in, for example, a new edition of Paulson Classics on the "PAULSON CHIPS" mold, so it will still take just as much money then as now to shake a set of Empress Joliet THCs loose from the deathgrips their current owners are clutching them with.
 
CrazyEddie said:
The people buying those sets aren't interested in, for example, a new edition of Paulson Classics on the "PAULSON CHIPS" mold, so it will still take just as much money then as now to shake a set of Empress Joliet THCs loose from the deathgrips their current owners are clutching them with.
Click to expand...

I think, everything else being equal, that there will be a literal stampede of new home orders even if they limited private sales to Paulson house mold and solid colours. Okay, a small stampede.
 
Nanook said:
This fantasy idea has been discussed at length before so that is why you are getting the kind of responses you are.

First and foremost, your wish is extremely unlikely. I'm not going to say impossible, but let's say 1 notch away from impossible. Paulson/GPI has been convinced by its real customers (actual casinos and card rooms) that for security reasons they should not sell to the public. Unfortunately it probably didn't take a whole lot of convincing because we were such a small segment of their business that we were almost inconsequential. Retail sales to customers like us are at most just a few percent of their total business.

If, in the infantesimally small chance they change their policy, large collections of playable sets would undoubtedly crash in value.
Click to expand...

Not the first time I’m reading that they stopped producing for security reasons. I didn’t quite get the argument and this mng I decided to do some research (from my phone, not ideal) took me 30 minutes but this is what I have found

I checked their 10K filings from the years around the time they communicated to retailers they’d stop selling to the home market (2014). Checked annual reports from 2010 to 2014, and their revenue split by segment made no mention of a non casino chip line, so I thought this looked like either this line was too small to be reported or these guys were selling from inventory and the activity was effectively being run down.

So I picked (randomly) the 10K filing from March 2003 and this is what I find under the “recent developments” section:
E4722351-55E2-4FB8-AC8F-5ACF31093E28.jpeg


Paulson stopped producing fantasy chips in 2003 and it took them 11years to sell that inventory? For that year the company had $20mm revenues of which 10% of that was sold as “Table equipment and other products” with every other segments being Casino oriented products offering. This tells me that the fantasy line had low demand/too small and/or was unprofitable.

So with that in mind. Is Paulson ever going to come back to selling to the home market? I don’t know how that would make sense when the average customer can buy a cheap plastic product for under 10c/chip.

Now If they were to come back…what happens to the “chip market” really depends on what they are offering. Don’t think we see a crash if they were offering RHC solids

Just my 2c
 
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PocketAces said:
Not the first time I’m reading that they stopped producing for security reasons. I didn’t quite get the argument and this mng I decided to do some research (from my phone, not ideal) took me 30 minutes but this is what I have found

I checked their 10K filing from the years around the time they communicated to retailers they’d stop selling to the home market (2014). Checked annual reports from 2010
to 2014, revenue split by segment makes no mention of a non casino chip line, so I thought this looked like either this was too small to be reported or these guys were selling from inventory and the activity was effectively being run down.

So I picked an annual report from 2003 and this is what I find under the “recent developments” section:
View attachment 915300

Paulson stopped producing fantasy chips in 2003 and it took them 11years to sell that inventory? For that year the company had $20mm revenues of which 10% of that was sold as “Table equipment and other products” with every other segments being Casino oriented products offering. This tells me that the fantasy line has low demand, too small and/or was unprofitable.

So with that in mind. Is Paulson ever going to come back to selling to the home market? I don’t know how that would make sense when the average customer can buy a cheap plastic product for under 10c/chip.

Now If they were to come back…what happens to the “chip market” really depends on what they are offering. Don’t think we see a crash if they were offering RHC solids

Just my 2c
Click to expand...
Thank you for going the extra mile! Great info here. Certainly enlightening to know that it took them 11 years to sell off the fantasy chips.
 
PocketAces said:
Paulson stopped producing fantasy chips in 2003 and it took them 11years to sell that inventory?
Click to expand...
The retail channels dried up pretty quick of any edge spotted chips, at least online. These include all the THC and RHC fantasy chips. When I got involved in September 2003 solid starbursts were still available but just barely. I remember pure souvenir chips lasting a little bit longer (zodiacs, presidents, flags, etc).
Paulson reintroduced fantasy sets in 2005 on the Paulson Chips mold. Paulson/GPI stopped these sales in 2014.
star.jpg
 
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Every time a thread like this gets started, I get the impression whomever starts the thread massively over-estimates the buying power we have. Allow me to free-form my thinking:

There are approximately 10k registered members here. (it says 9.5k on the home page, but I'm rounding up for easier math).

It's the middle of the night in North America as I type this, but it says there are 897 users on in the last 24 hours. Lets call that 1000, again for round numbers.

Lets also say that's the number of active users, as that represents a 24 hours period. There might be slightly more who only check in on a weekly basis, or only a few times a week, but for estimation purposes, that 1000 "active" users is a valid number.

A quick internet search for "number of open casinos" produced this page:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/221031/total-worldwide-casinos-by-region/

That states there are 3547 open casinos as of October 2011. Yeah, more than ten year old data, but an interesting data point when it's safe to assume gaming was doing well (economy OK, sufficient disposable income to go to casinos for recreation, etc.).

That's more than 3x the number of active users here. Not all of those casinos using Paulson chips, and not all of those casinos are looking to refresh their current racks. For pessimistic numbers, lets say 10% of those are making an annual purchase, either for new chips or add-ons to existing chips in use, so 350 for round numbers.

Of the "1000" active PCF users, 10% might be looking to Paulson for a custom set. David at CPC might see 100 new orders a year. I don't know, again just guessing (and I don't expect to have him volunteer numbers), but making a hand-waving guess at the number of CPC sets we see posted here (and knowing that we aren't the only source of CPC orders). Paulson sets from non-casino patrons would probably max out at 2000 chips (there are those of use here who would likely get more) but a safer number might be 1000 as many of the "how many chips do I need" threads recommend numbers less than even that.

So, again for argument's sake and round numbers, 100 users at 1000 chips per user is only 100k chips, and those represent a "one time" buy. The vast majority of us who were in that fictitious purchase are now likely happy and are unlikely to "double dip" and go back for more (says the guy with six custom CPC sets... :oops:).

A quick search shows the HSI buy had about 450k chips:

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/life-is-grand.89232/page-43#post-1846981

That represents one casino. This was also likely a one time buy, and it feels like a rather large purchase, but even if the average buy for a single casino is 1/3 of that, that's still more than the active user pool at PCF could produce if the pearly gates at Paulson opened up to us.

HSI = one casino. Paulson might get 350 casino orders per year.


Again, this is just back of the envelope, bar napkin math and pie in the sky guesses. The real numbers are likely different, but I suspect these are in the ballpark.



Paulson has absolutely zero reason to jeopardize their very cozy casino business to start to make chips for us. We are the background noise to them... the windshield to a swarm of gnats. It doesn't make mathematical (or business) sense to jeopardize the golden goose that is the casino-only business to start offering chips to a dedicated but realistically small group of enthusiasts.

I know if I owned Paulson, I wouldn't open up my business to selling to us. I likely would have seen what was done in the NAGBs and said "oh hell no...".





Sorry to be Debbie Downer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Downer

...but it's just the mathematics of reality (but a really fun thinking experiment).
 
AlbinoDragon said:
Every time a thread like this gets started, I get the impression whomever starts the thread massively over-estimates the buying power we have. Allow me to free-form my thinking:

There are approximately 10k registered members here. (it says 9.5k on the home page, but I'm rounding up for easier math).

It's the middle of the night in North America as I type this, but it says there are 897 users on in the last 24 hours. Lets call that 1000, again for round numbers.

Lets also say that's the number of active users, as that represents a 24 hours period. There might be slightly more who only check in on a weekly basis, or only a few times a week, but for estimation purposes, that 1000 "active" users is a valid number.

A quick internet search for "number of open casinos" produced this page:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/221031/total-worldwide-casinos-by-region/

That states there are 3547 open casinos as of October 2011. Yeah, more than ten year old data, but an interesting data point when it's safe to assume gaming was doing well (economy OK, sufficient disposable income to go to casinos for recreation, etc.).

That's more than 3x the number of active users here. Not all of those casinos using Paulson chips, and not all of those casinos are looking to refresh their current racks. For pessimistic numbers, lets say 10% of those are making an annual purchase, either for new chips or add-ons to existing chips in use, so 350 for round numbers.

Of the "1000" active PCF users, 10% might be looking to Paulson for a custom set. David at CPC might see 100 new orders a year. I don't know, again just guessing (and I don't expect to have him volunteer numbers), but making a hand-waving guess at the number of CPC sets we see posted here (and knowing that we aren't the only source of CPC orders). Paulson sets from non-casino patrons would probably max out at 2000 chips (there are those of use here who would likely get more) but a safer number might be 1000 as many of the "how many chips do I need" threads recommend numbers less than even that.

So, again for argument's sake and round numbers, 100 users at 1000 chips per user is only 100k chips, and those represent a "one time" buy. The vast majority of us who were in that fictitious purchase are now likely happy and are unlikely to "double dip" and go back for more (says the guy with six custom CPC sets... :oops:).

A quick search shows the HSI buy had about 450k chips:

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/life-is-grand.89232/page-43#post-1846981

That represents one casino. This was also likely a one time buy, and it feels like a rather large purchase, but even if the average buy for a single casino is 1/3 of that, that's still more than the active user pool at PCF could produce if the pearly gates at Paulson opened up to us.

HSI = one casino. Paulson might get 350 casino orders per year.


Again, this is just back of the envelope, bar napkin math and pie in the sky guesses. The real numbers are likely different, but I suspect these are in the ballpark.



Paulson has absolutely zero reason to jeopardize their very cozy casino business to start to make chips for us. We are the background noise to them... the windshield to a swarm of gnats. It doesn't make mathematical (or business) sense to jeopardize the golden goose that is the casino-only business to start offering chips to a dedicated but realistically small group of enthusiasts.

I know if I owned Paulson, I wouldn't open up my business to selling to us. I likely would have seen what was done in the NAGBs and said "oh hell no...".





Sorry to be Debbie Downer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Downer

...but it's just the mathematics of reality (but a really fun thinking experiment).
Click to expand...
Great write up!
 
So, to recap from info @PocketAces and @cpiaaq provided, plus some other sources:

Paulson discontinued retail sales in 2003. Those sales had included a variety of custom and fantasy sets. Retail chips included inlaid chips (fantasy and custom), hotstamps (fantasy and custom), and Starbursts. Molds used for retail chips included THC, RHC, Suits, Web, Diamond, and some others. Chips sold included both solids and spotted chips, using spot patterns that were reserved for retail use. They shut down their retail store in Las Vegas at the same time.

Paulson resumed retail sales with Paulson Classics and Pharaohs on the PAULSON CHIPS mold in 2005. I'm guessing (but not certain) that they did not reopen their retail store. Perhaps they only sold their chips online, perhaps through select retailers? Maybe chips like the Classics and Pharaohs were produced on commission for specific retailers, who then sold them directly themselves? That's certainly what happened with the Le Paulson Noirs.

They stopped again in 2014.

And we've been crying about it ever since.

---

Chime in if I've gotten anything wrong here.
 
I think they’ll do it. I wrote a strongly worded letter to the plant manager in Mexico.

“Dear plant manager, Paulson de Mexico,

Open up sales to the US consumer market or we’ll send our most influential gringos down there to unionize your workers like they did in Ocean’s Thirteen.

Best regards,

Head Gringo”
 
AlbinoDragon said:
Every time a thread like this gets started, I get the impression whomever starts the thread massively over-estimates the buying power we have. Allow me to free-form my thinking:

There are approximately 10k registered members here. (it says 9.5k on the home page, but I'm rounding up for easier math).

It's the middle of the night in North America as I type this, but it says there are 897 users on in the last 24 hours. Lets call that 1000, again for round numbers.

Lets also say that's the number of active users, as that represents a 24 hours period. There might be slightly more who only check in on a weekly basis, or only a few times a week, but for estimation purposes, that 1000 "active" users is a valid number.

A quick internet search for "number of open casinos" produced this page:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/221031/total-worldwide-casinos-by-region/

That states there are 3547 open casinos as of October 2011. Yeah, more than ten year old data, but an interesting data point when it's safe to assume gaming was doing well (economy OK, sufficient disposable income to go to casinos for recreation, etc.).

That's more than 3x the number of active users here. Not all of those casinos using Paulson chips, and not all of those casinos are looking to refresh their current racks. For pessimistic numbers, lets say 10% of those are making an annual purchase, either for new chips or add-ons to existing chips in use, so 350 for round numbers.

Of the "1000" active PCF users, 10% might be looking to Paulson for a custom set. David at CPC might see 100 new orders a year. I don't know, again just guessing (and I don't expect to have him volunteer numbers), but making a hand-waving guess at the number of CPC sets we see posted here (and knowing that we aren't the only source of CPC orders). Paulson sets from non-casino patrons would probably max out at 2000 chips (there are those of use here who would likely get more) but a safer number might be 1000 as many of the "how many chips do I need" threads recommend numbers less than even that.

So, again for argument's sake and round numbers, 100 users at 1000 chips per user is only 100k chips, and those represent a "one time" buy. The vast majority of us who were in that fictitious purchase are now likely happy and are unlikely to "double dip" and go back for more (says the guy with six custom CPC sets... :oops:).

A quick search shows the HSI buy had about 450k chips:

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/life-is-grand.89232/page-43#post-1846981

That represents one casino. This was also likely a one time buy, and it feels like a rather large purchase, but even if the average buy for a single casino is 1/3 of that, that's still more than the active user pool at PCF could produce if the pearly gates at Paulson opened up to us.

HSI = one casino. Paulson might get 350 casino orders per year.


Again, this is just back of the envelope, bar napkin math and pie in the sky guesses. The real numbers are likely different, but I suspect these are in the ballpark.



Paulson has absolutely zero reason to jeopardize their very cozy casino business to start to make chips for us. We are the background noise to them... the windshield to a swarm of gnats. It doesn't make mathematical (or business) sense to jeopardize the golden goose that is the casino-only business to start offering chips to a dedicated but realistically small group of enthusiasts.

I know if I owned Paulson, I wouldn't open up my business to selling to us. I likely would have seen what was done in the NAGBs and said "oh hell no...".





Sorry to be Debbie Downer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Downer

...but it's just the mathematics of reality (but a really fun thinking experiment).
Click to expand...
Excellent analysis. I agree 100%.
 
AlbinoDragon said:
Every time a thread like this gets started, I get the impression whomever starts the thread massively over-estimates the buying power we have......

Paulson has absolutely zero reason to jeopardize their very cozy casino business to start to make chips for us. We are the background noise to them...

...but it's just the mathematics of reality....
Click to expand...

I love bar napkin math! I do it all the time & I'm convinced that way more often than not it sheds a lot of light on why things are the way they are. It's not exact, but certainly close enough to illustrate the point.
 
ChipsGetMePumped said:
I always wondered what would happen to the chip prices if Paulson's got back into the home market and started making chips again for the general consumer? Anyone know or have any good insight?????
Click to expand...
The looming recession might hit chips harder than manufacturing decisions
 

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