Psypher1000
Straight Flush
My votes have been cast. There are no bad sets nominated ("They're all good sets, Brant"). I chose to vote for five. Of those five, I want to give three a special mention...
Clermont Lounge - I'd like to echo @bergs comments above. These are a perfect nod to the old USPC crest and seal era of chips. While the materials and process used in creating them may be different, my god is the execution flawless. Great theme, perfect Cali color selection, and as said above, they seem to handle great (I only have my sample set to judge, tho). They are the best custom plain mold set of chips I've ever encountered.
Bee Room - Again, I think @bergs has the right of it here (I promise I'll try not to say that too much). At the time they were unveiled, The Bee Room set was a revelation. A single set with mostly simple and steady spot progression, effective use of color, and that can cover, limit, NL/PL cash, and tournaments. Even a 43mm chip is included! I forgive the $10 chip as an aberation because, at the time, I don't think most players and set builders really knew any better and many commercial sets included some kind of $10 chip. It looks like his have some use on their edges (maybe used as a fractional in low fixed limit games?). At a time when color, spot, and mold selections were all at a minimum, this set opened peoples' eyes and minds to what was possible.
Vesper Club - Not many sets are commissioned on a hope and a prayer. This is one of them, and that prayer was beautifully answered. Very few people will know how long and deeply this set was agonized over at every step and decision. Regardless of that, it is as perfect a representation of an old school spotted large crown set that can be created today. The line work is exactly what you might see on a large crown hot stamp set from the 40's. The colors are Cali-esque, which is largely appropriate for the time period and the location (early Cali clubs might have followed a general color progression but all of them did something slightly different). Many large crown sets of the period were solids, but those that had spots generally were both distinctive and simple. The reserved use of spots here is highly appropriate. And it was all designed without even knowing if the blanks could successfully be stamped. Keep in mind that CPC will not hot stamp large crowns, so that task was left to a third party which needed to experiment a bit. Ultimately that expiriment was successful, but that's also why it didn't make sense to go large with this set - if you ordered 2k blanks that couldn't be stamped, you have two thousand colorful pieces of shit. Instead, you have a perfect work of art and labor of love that is, so far as I'm aware, the only set of its kind created since the the large crown mold has been put into the mold rotation at CPC.
Clermont Lounge - I'd like to echo @bergs comments above. These are a perfect nod to the old USPC crest and seal era of chips. While the materials and process used in creating them may be different, my god is the execution flawless. Great theme, perfect Cali color selection, and as said above, they seem to handle great (I only have my sample set to judge, tho). They are the best custom plain mold set of chips I've ever encountered.
Bee Room - Again, I think @bergs has the right of it here (I promise I'll try not to say that too much). At the time they were unveiled, The Bee Room set was a revelation. A single set with mostly simple and steady spot progression, effective use of color, and that can cover, limit, NL/PL cash, and tournaments. Even a 43mm chip is included! I forgive the $10 chip as an aberation because, at the time, I don't think most players and set builders really knew any better and many commercial sets included some kind of $10 chip. It looks like his have some use on their edges (maybe used as a fractional in low fixed limit games?). At a time when color, spot, and mold selections were all at a minimum, this set opened peoples' eyes and minds to what was possible.
Vesper Club - Not many sets are commissioned on a hope and a prayer. This is one of them, and that prayer was beautifully answered. Very few people will know how long and deeply this set was agonized over at every step and decision. Regardless of that, it is as perfect a representation of an old school spotted large crown set that can be created today. The line work is exactly what you might see on a large crown hot stamp set from the 40's. The colors are Cali-esque, which is largely appropriate for the time period and the location (early Cali clubs might have followed a general color progression but all of them did something slightly different). Many large crown sets of the period were solids, but those that had spots generally were both distinctive and simple. The reserved use of spots here is highly appropriate. And it was all designed without even knowing if the blanks could successfully be stamped. Keep in mind that CPC will not hot stamp large crowns, so that task was left to a third party which needed to experiment a bit. Ultimately that expiriment was successful, but that's also why it didn't make sense to go large with this set - if you ordered 2k blanks that couldn't be stamped, you have two thousand colorful pieces of shit. Instead, you have a perfect work of art and labor of love that is, so far as I'm aware, the only set of its kind created since the the large crown mold has been put into the mold rotation at CPC.
