[Part Three]
So, with that knowledge baseline established, I can turn to your specific questions. These are great questions, by the way, and hopefully between my first two general information posts and this post with some specific answers, you'll have a decent foundation to get started on your chipping journey.
The first guide to quality is the
type of chip. The five types I laid out above basically go from lowest quality to highest quality.
Within each category you'll find a range of qualities, but the differences are small and often a matter of personal preference. So, for example, while there's very broad agreement that clay chips from Classic Poker Chips are dramatically better than generic mass-market plastic chips like dice chips, there can be and has been endless debate about whether
CPC clays are better than Paulson clays, or which of the dozen different molds that
CPC offers are better than the others.
Beyond the five types of chips as a general guide, though, the only way to determine various chips' quality is for you to examine them yourself, with your own eyes, ears, and hands. This is why the PCF mantra is
Get Samples. Quality is largely a matter of taste and preference, and your tastes and preferences will undoubtedly be different from anyone else's.
At the end of this post I'll try to give you an idea of the general consensus, though, because I'm sure you're curious about it and you'll find out soon enough anyway.
Molds come in two varieties for the two main types of plastic molding processes - injection molding and compression molding. There's other types, but we're not concerned about them here. Here's what they look like:
Injection mold:
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Compression mold:
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Injection molding is a highly-automated process. Compression molding is largely manual. This is one reason that injection molded chips are super-cheap and compression molded chips are crazy expensive.
Here's what injection molding typically looks like. This example is making flash drives, but making poker chips - or anything, really - would be similar (although this is just one example; there are many, many, many different ways to set up injection molding equipment).
Compression molding, however, is very different. Here's a good animation showing how compression molding works:
And here's an actual example of compression molding. This press is making just one part in each compression, whereas the press that Classic Poker Chips uses will make multiple chips in a single press cycle - but still only about twenty or so at once. The upshot is that there is a lot of manual labor involved in making parts with a compression mold.
When it comes to cheap injection-molded plastic chips, we mostly don't care about molds. But when it comes to compression-molded clays, we care about the molds quite a bit. The molds create the debossed (impressed) patterns around the outer edges, which gives each chip a unique appearance. For casinos, these patterns are part of the chips' security; it's difficult to create a chip that closely resembles some other chip if you don't have the same molds that were used to make it. For us collectors, different molds affect the way the chips look, and some of us like the looks of some molds better than others. The mold also affects things like how thick the chip is and what kind of texture its surface has, and that likewise influences how much different collectors like one mold over another.
Poker chip collector Robert Eisenstadt (who recently passed away) compiled a visual encyclopedia of as many different molds as he could find. It's not 100% complete, but it's still a very valuable reference. Take a quick skim to see what sorts of mold patterns have been used in the past:
https://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/molddesignindex_site.htm
That said, most of what's there is of mainly historical interest now. For modern collectors trying to build a playable set of chips for their home game, there are just a handful of relevant varieties:
- THC - Top Hat and Cane. This is the main mold that Paulson used to use, and Paulson was and is the main supplier of chips to casinos in modern times. There are several different Paulson molds that have a top hat and cane, but here we use "THC" to mean one specific mold (well, three... but never mind that for now).
- RHC - Reverse Hat and Cane. This is another Paulson mold. It also has a top hat and cane, but two of the eight canes are reversed, pointing the opposite direction. There are some other differences between THC and RHC. RHC has become more commonly used than THC by casinos in recent years.
- House Molds - Many casinos have Paulson make their chips, but use a mold that's specific to the casino rather than one of the generic THC or RHC molds.
- TR King Small Crowns - TR King was another big supplier to casinos, and the Small Crowns mold was one of two molds that they used. Small Crowns TRKs are highly regarded by collectors and highly sought after.
- CPC Molds - Classic Poker Chips has about a dozen different molds that they can use, and customers can take their pick. If you get a set of custom clays, you'll get them from CPC, and choosing which mold to use is a major decision in the process of designing and ordering your custom chips.
- Burt / ASM Molds - These are essentially the same as the CPC molds, since Burt and ASM were the previous incarnations of the company now called CPC. However, the earlier companies had a slightly different assortment of molds that they could use. These molds are relevant to people who collect older sets, because the older sets were most often made by Burt or ASM.
Paulson was a company that made chips; that company is now part of Gaming Partners, Inc. The Paulson name is a well-recognized brand of chips. The company was actually called Paul-Son, and they supplied not just chips but many other gaming supplies to the casino industry (such as dice and tables). Paul-Son was named after its owner and founder Paul Endy Jr, who was a former employee of TR King and was also the son of Paul Endy Sr, who was a partner in TR King.
Paulson has several molds that they use to make chips, the most relevant of which are
THC,
RHC, and the casino house molds as I mentioned above. There are many more molds that Paulson has, but they're less commonly-used and less well-regarded.
Although Paulson has many molds besides hat-and-cane, there are several
different varieties of mold just
among the hat-and-cane molds:
- THC - Top Hat and Cane - this is the older version, still in use, and generally more well-regarded
- RHC - Reversed Hat and Cane - this is the newer version, more common today, and generally less well-regarded
- IHC - Inverted Hat and Cane - these are 43mm chips, i.e. large chips; the standard size of chip is 39mm
- Fat Hats - these are 48mm chips, even larger than the IHCs
Also, THC itself comes in two varieties: SCV (Short Cane Version) and LCV (Long Cane Version). Paulson doesn't distinguish between these two molds, and will make a given THC chip using either mold, often using one mold on one side and the other on the other side.
Paulson chips are the hands-down majority favorite (although many people like TRKs even more, and some have particular soft spots for
BCC, and everyone loves their own custom CPCs). All clay chips are loved more than any of the non-clay options, but even among clays Paulsons are the leaders. As to why... you'll have to find out for yourself by putting your hands on them. They just feel so much nicer than anything else.
Paulson
used to sell chips to the home market, but they haven't done that in many years. So now the only ways to get Paulsons are as follows:
- You can go to a casino, buy chips, and walk out the door with them. This is called "harvesting"; sometimes it's straightforward, other times it's difficult. It depends on how strict the casino is about letting people take lots of chips home with them. Search for "harvesting" on the forum to learn more about this, the circumstances under which it's easy or difficult, some tips to make it easier, and a giant debate about the legality and ethics of doing so. Also, you'll have to pay face value for the chips; that's fine for picking up $1 chips, but if you need a bunch of $25 or $100 chips in your home game that's going to get painfully expensive.
- Now and then a casino closes, or rebrands, or never opens in the first place, and the chips that they used or were planning to use become available for purchase all at once as a giant lot. Someone - very often Jim with The Chip Room - will buy up all the chips and then sell them in smaller lots to the PCF membership.
- People who in the past bought Paulson chips at retail, when that was still possible, eventually decide to sell their chips, or maybe their children turned them up in the attic and decided to sell them. These will show up in garage sales and craigslist and eBay, and the lucky observant few will snap them up.
- Regardless of how Paulson chips got into someone's hands to begin with, eventually they end up on the third-party market, which means they get into the hands of collectors like us, and we trade them on the PCF classifieds. So your best bet at finding Paulsons is to watch the classified ads right here.
For low-end chips, use google and
amazon and
eBay to search for "poker chips". You'll find lots of retailers with a wide variety of designs. See if any appeal to you.
For ceramics, check out
ABC Gifts and Awards to see if any of their stock designs look appealing.
For a variety of chips, both low end and high end (but good quality regardless), check out
Apache Poker Chips.
For a variety of chips of all sorts, check out the
Hobbyphilic video channel for reviews and showcases of many, many different chips.
For high-end chips (ceramics and higher, plus sometimes china clays and occasionally mass markets) check out the
PCF classifieds. It's a great way to see what types of chips people who really like chips really like, and to find out what possibilities exist, as well as learn how much they cost. Also check out the
Poker Chip Showcase forum to see tons and tons of pictures of amazing chips.
For custom chips, check out the
PCF galleries, the
PCF hall of fame, and the
PCF Custom Poker Chips General forum.
Getting samples depends on what
kind of chip you're trying to get samples of. Most retailers will sell samples of the same chips they sell in full sets; this especially includes Apache, who has samples of high-end chips as well. Samples of almost anything are available on
eBay, although prices will be very high. Watch the PCF classifieds, although often the samples sold there are of very hard-to-get and valuable sets, which aren't really the kind of samples you want just to put your hands on them, those are more for collectors who want something specific. You can post a wanted ad asking for something in particular you're trying to get samples of, or you can reach out via PM to members who you think might be helpful.
Different ways to put graphic designs and/or text on a chip:
- Hot stamps are metallic foil (usually gold but sometimes other colors) that are pressed into the slightly-melted surface of a chip (remember, chips are made out of plastic!). The specific design to be stamped onto the chip has to be made into a stamp (which is called a "die"), and then a machine is used to heat up the die and then manually stamp the design in foil onto the chip.
Both clay chips and plastic chips can be hotstamped, although not all clay chips and not all plastic chips can be hotstamped.
- Inlays are circles of paper or plastic that are printed in sheets, cut out into circles, and then pressed into the surface of clay chips during the compression-molding process.
- Decals are circles of paper or plastic that are printed in sheets, cut out into circles, and then glued onto the surface of mass-market or casino-quality plastic chips after the chip has been manufactured by the injection-molding process.
- Dye-sublimation printing is used to print onto ceramic chips.
Inlays and decals are the same kind of thing, but an inlay is an inlay because it is
pressed into a clay chip (it is "laid into" the chip, thus is an inlay). Plastic chips don't have inlays, they have decals aka labels aka stickers.
Here's examples of hotstamps on clay chips, plastic chips, and a cardboard box:
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Hope that all helps! I have to go for now, but I'll answer your last few questions later on - although I'm sure others will have great answers for you anyway.
Be sure to ask follow-up questions! There's a lot here to learn. Search the site for specific terms and you'll often find posts which, either directly or more often indirectly, will give you the information you're looking for.
Welcome to the forum and good luck on your journey!
