Paulson chips for PCF (1 Viewer)

[BGinGA]

But new entrants are by no means impossible! CPC was itself a new entrant just a few years ago; they were able to fill an empty niche (the home market) and were able to purchase all of their assets (equipment, R&D, etc) from a previous player that had gone out of business. BCC had a somewhat similar story, being a new startup and making a fair go of it before getting bought out by GPI. Even Paulson started as a competitor to Burt Co, and eventually became a collossal success.

As an aside, ^this^ paragraph is pretty misleading in regards to how 'easy' or 'simple' it might be to start a new chip-making company from scratch. In each of the examples cited above, significant chip manufacturing history and experience was involved with each 'start-up' company:

• CPC -- the new owners of the ASM assets had the considerable experience of long-time chip manufacturer Jim Blanchard, who left retirement to join the venture. Jim was a former production manager at Burt Co., who later purchased the Burt assets and operated his own Atlantic Standard Molding chip manufacturing company for decades before retiring.
• BCC's founders -- Charles Endy and son Mike -- had just recently sold their Paulson family business in a reverse merger that created GPI, when they decided to get back into chip manufacturing -- bringing 30 years of chip-manufacturing experience to the table.
• Paul-Son -- Paul Endy Jr., general manager at TR King (and son of TR King owner Paul Endy Sr.) left TRK and started the new Paul-Son Dice Co. when his father retired. Their initial chips were produced by Burt Co., until Charles Endy (former TRK manager) created a company (Top Hat & Cane Co.) and developed and perfected a new process for manufacturing clay chips and joined brother Paul to create the Paul-Son Gaming Supply Company. Decades of combined TRK chip manufacturing experience assisted in the venture.

The only company in recent history to (publicly) attempt clay chip manufacturing from scratch was Matsui, and they gave it up pretty quickly.

And the original Hispania assets, since owned by three separate chip-related companies (but none with prior compression clay experience or insider knowledge of processes or materials) have not yet been utilized for clay chip production. It takes more than just equipment and money to sucessfully compete -- or even just participate -- in this arena. Knowledge and experience are key components.

 

[BGinGA]

While I'm well aware that you've forgotten more about poker chips than I'll ever know... that's something I'd bet against.

Billion dollar industries and entire economies have gone under due to advances in technology, and it happens in a lot less than 45 years. That said, @Windwalker made a great point about the fact they're not consumables, so I can see that, and the fact it's an extremely niche market, delaying progress. But the tech will come in the next few years to either replicate the process, or create a similar quality chip.

I'd take that bet, except I won't live long enough to collect. Many have tried and failed.

 

[BGinGA]

Neat. I had no idea this was true. Any links to this, I can't find any info on the GPI site. Or is this something you'd have to talk to a sales rep about?

GPI reps definitely have sales brochures, which were once listed on the GPI web site (no longer). There are copies of excerpts posted here on PCF.

 

[redeagle]

I just woke from a nightmare that Apple was replacing all physical chips with iChips. You just tell your phone “Siri, let’s raise to a thousand” and a little holographic 3d stack of chips on the table gets updated. We all had to play wearing VR headsets and were only able to collect little photo cards with pictures of chips since nobody will be making them any more. Now I panic every time I hear a politician say “no more frac-ing”.

 

[redeagle]

Billion dollar industries and entire economies have gone under due to advances in technology, and it happens in a lot less than 45 years. That said, @Windwalker made a great point about the fact they're not consumables, so I can see that, and the fact it's an extremely niche market, delaying progress. But the tech will come in the next few years to either replicate the process, or create a similar quality chip.

On a serious note, there are several industries that still make their products with very very old methods. It doesn’t mean technology has not made them better companies. The advances are in other areas like planning, logistics, order management. For example, I doubt they still design chips on paper using an artist at a drafting table to draw out proofs. Sure, one day it might be a 3d printer that can use clay as the material but I think it also depends on how much of the competitive advantage or cost structure is due to the physical production process.

I’m the first to admit I don’t know anything about chip making, but I have seen that tech can improve lots of areas of a business and success does not always revolve around the “making it” part.

I find all of your insights pretty interesting about this industry that has been an unknown to me until joining this forum.

 

[wolfpack]

I just woke from a nightmare that Apple was replacing all physical chips with iChips. You just tell your phone “Siri, let’s raise to a thousand” and a little holographic 3d stack of chips on the table gets updated. We all had to play wearing VR headsets and were only able to collect little photo cards with pictures of chips since nobody will be making them any more. Now I panic every time I hear a politician say “no more frac-ing”.

pretty sure there re chipless tables now, in fact I think there are tables all electronic no chips or dealers. Wouldn't doubt that is the way of the future for cost cutting

 

[BGinGA]

there are tables all electronic no chips or dealers. Wouldn't doubt that is the way of the future for cost cutting

There are serious penalties here for publicly expressing these type of radical views. Please direct your chip hate and riot-inciting rhetoric to the Politics subforum.

 

[redeagle]

pretty sure there re chipless tables now, in fact I think there are tables all electronic no chips or dealers. Wouldn't doubt that is the way of the future for cost cutting

I didn’t know that. Yuck. I don’t see the point. I would rather just stay at home and play online via computer. Not everything needs to be efficient-ized to the Nth degree.

I equate this to movie theaters. Sure you can watch everything at home now on Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon etc., but that doesn’t replace the live experience of going with a date to the movie theater and watching it with a bucket of popcorn. The movie industry already knows that people value the social experience of going out. Although who knows how Covid has impacted this long-term.

 

[Thomacetti]

pretty sure there re chipless tables now, in fact I think there are tables all electronic no chips or dealers. Wouldn't doubt that is the way of the future for cost cutting

You see wifey, i'm not hoarding useless and expensive clay discs

I'm building a mini museum to conserve all these priceless items of art....like a Van Gogh but better

 

[CrazyEddie]

One thing to bear in mind is that different clay chips are actually all modestly different from each other. TRKs, THCs, CPCs, BCCs, etc all feel and handle differently, which shouldn't be too suprising as they have different formulas and different production workflows - even though they're all merely variations of the same basic process. So if you want to start a new company making chips that look and feel and handle like clays, you have to ask yourself - "WHICH clays?" Are you trying to make clones of TRKs? Or old leaded Paulsons? Or new non-leaded Paulsons?

With time and effort and patience and trial and error you could undoubtedly develop a formula and process from scratch that resulted in a chip which was very similar to one or more of the clays we know and love. The exact details of each are secrets so you'd have a hard time nailing it exactly, but the general ideas are well-known; eventually you'd come up with something that was "close enough".

This has already been done several times in recent years, and the results were China Clays. These chips were attempts to approximate the feel of traditional clays using all-new material formulas, and using low-cost well-understood commodity injection molding. There's been several different types of china clays produced independently by different manufacturers and they are all quite different from each other. And while they're a lot more like traditional clays than, say, dice chips are, none of them are close enough to clays to ever be confused for them. They're close enough to be an acceptable low-cost alternative for the home market, but they don't satisfy anyone looking for the experience of casino chips.

Starting a new compression-molded clay chip product line from scratch - one that would be similar enough to Paulsons to satisfy the connoisseurs - is certainly possible... but the question is not whether it's possible, but rather whether it's economic to do so. All it takes is trial and error... but how much start-up money can you raise to buy yourself enough time to do enough trial and error to develop a successful product? The people who have tried it recently ended up with china clays. Can you do better?

I hope you can! We'd all like to have another company making this kind of chip with that level of quality! If you, or anyone, gives it a shot then I'll be rooting for you...

... but I won't be holding my breath.

 

[CrazyEddie]

There was a link recently posted on PCF to an online PDF document that identified several material types (along with inventor/company), some used for early 20th century poker chips (and garment buttons, among other things) -- I thought either you or @Jeff in Iowa posted it.

I think you're thinking of this post?

Most were different variants and precursors to what we'd categorize today as "plastic" (nylon, polyester, etc.), but not similar to compression-clay material.

It's hard to know for sure, of course, but from the reading I've been able to do so far I've started to theorize that:

• Early chips from, for example, USPCC were "composition chips"
• Composition here means a composite of shellac and clay (and often numerous other things)
• At some point celluloid (or one of its close relatives) started replacing shellac in the composites, still during the early 20th c
• At some later point even newer and better plastics, such as vinyl or nylon, started being used in the composites, probably shortly before or after WWII
• USPCC, Portland Billiard Ball Co, and Burt Co were involved in this transition from shellac to celluloid to modern plastics
• ... and those most recent composites are what we now refer to as "clay", which dominated the casino industry for decades

Separately, Bakelite (and later its close relative Catalin) came into existence and was used for manufacturing poker chips (along with many, many, many other industrial and consumer products) - but the industry devoted to making Bakelite poker chips seems to have developed entirely in parallel with the composition chip market, and was confined to home products, never crossing over into the clubs, card rooms, and casinos, effectively becoming an evolutionary dead end.

The process for making poker chips out of Bakelite and Catalin was very different from that used to make composition chips, which is probably why they remained two completely separate supply chains, being made by different companies and sold via different channels into different markets. There were numerous companies making products out of Bakelite (and related materials). This was probably during the late 1910s through the early 1930s. It's possible that the "nine establishments" referred to above included some of these, but I'm not confident of that, given the document's focus on "composition" and the timeframe in which the document's data was collected and the document was produced.

The past is murky, and we view it dimly through broken spyglasses.

 

[BGinGA]

I find it pretty interesting that Bakelite, Catalin, and even actual glazed porcelain/ceramic materials were often used to produce high-end backgammon checkers during that era, but not poker chips (at least not in significant numbers). Their material properties would seem to be fitting for either application.

 

[Tommy]

Neat. I had no idea this was true. Any links to this, I can't find any info on the GPI site. Or is this something you'd have to talk to a sales rep about?

 

[allforcharity]

I find it pretty interesting that Bakelite, Catalin, and even actual glazed porcelain/ceramic materials were often used to produce high-end backgammon checkers during that era, but not poker chips (at least not in significant numbers). Their material properties would seem to be fitting for either application.

I thought there were large numbers of unmarked/unbranded Bakelite/Catalin chips made (by who and marketed for whom I would have no idea) - you see them all the time on eBay and Craigslist ads.

 

[JScott]

pretty sure there re chipless tables now, in fact I think there are tables all electronic no chips or dealers. Wouldn't doubt that is the way of the future for cost cutting

That’s a negative of a technology advancement for sure.

but again I feel the same way about online poker. I just don’t like it. I love the feel of chips, the shuffling, the sounds, the banter.

i just love live poker.

 

[wolfpack]

That’s a negative of a technology advancement for sure.

but again I feel the same way about online poker. I just don’t like it. I love the feel of chips, the shuffling, the sounds, the banter.

i just love live poker.

I agree, I won’t play on electronic tables I hate the idea of them I was just stating an unfortunate fact of where things seem to be heading

 

[JScott]

I agree, I won’t play on electronic tables I hate the idea of them I was just stating an unfortunate fact of where things seem to be heading

When I’m bored I will admit I jump into VR and play some poker.

it’s like online but better.

 

[CrazyEddie]

I find it pretty interesting that Bakelite, Catalin, and even actual glazed porcelain/ceramic materials were often used to produce high-end backgammon checkers during that era, but not poker chips (at least not in significant numbers). Their material properties would seem to be fitting for either application.

I'm not sure what qualifies as significant numbers. They were probably made in much smaller quantities than composition and clay chips, but as @allforcharity noted they're plentiful on eBay.

The manufacturing process (casting and machining) didn't lend itself to decoration and customization the way that compression molding does, and that probably played a big role in keeping them in the home market and out of card rooms, which in turn probably led to much smaller sales volume and their eventual extinction when injection molding came on the scene. They're almost all plain colored discs, although I've seen some with foil-stamped monograms. The Catalin chips are at least pretty with their typical marbled swirls, but the plain Bakelite ones are dull as dishwater.

This is one of the better historical resources I've found on Bakelite and Catalin. Great stuff in here, well worth reading if you're interested in the topic at all: https://www.elvenkrafte.com/bakelite presentation.htm

It mentions that there were a large number of manufacturers of Catalin products. This, alas, can be readily seen if you try collecting Catalin poker chips - there is so much variation between different manufacturers and different batches that shade matching, or even size matching, is pretty much hopeless if you don't buy a single set all at once.

 

[upNdown]

Discussion is moot.... PCF finding consensus on how that chipset has to look < getting order in

Right. You’d all want black inlays and I’d want to throw them in a blender.

 

[upNdown]

I agree, I won’t play on electronic tables I hate the idea of them I was just stating an unfortunate fact of where things seem to be heading

I mean, I hate the idea of them too. But if the choice was either an electronic live table or online poker, I’ll take the live game 100 out of 100 times

 

[pltrgyst]

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