CrazyEddie
Full House
I just ran across this: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2641653/18cash-and-18shares-official-discussion-thread
In short: "18Cash" is a set of ceramic poker chips designed by @Johnny5 intended to be used for 18XX board games ("train games"). Holy Cow these chips look amazing! Design by J5, train illustrations by Przemek Kozlowski:
The folks producing these chips, Mercury Games, are also producing a related set of ceramic poker chips they call "18Shares", which are intended to replace the paper stock certificates normally used in train games. These shares chips are 47mm ceramics; the idea is that when it's time to pay out money for each share owned, you can stack the dividends (using the 39mm cash chips) on top of each share and thereby easily tell who's been paid so far:
Mercury Games ran a Kickstarter in April 2021 to produce these, but they canceled it in May; they couldn't get enough backers due to high costs and limited marketing opportunities due to Covid. See https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ares-make-your-18xx-even-better/posts/3185532
Judging by a few comments I've seen on BGG and Reddit, it seems most train gamers were underwhelmed with the concept and very dissuaded by the cost. Apache's Bank was often mentioned as a much lower cost and still highly suitable alternative. Plus, most train gamers by now have already found a poker chip set that they're happy with, whether it's Bank or dice chips. Adding something attractive to bling out their set seems to be a lower priority than simply continuing to use something functional, especially given the cost.
I'm not a train gamer, but if I ever were to pick up the 18XX hobby (and I might!) then I would buy a set of these J5 ceramics in a heartbeat. But it seems that that's just me. Alas.
Mercury did move forward with production, and made enough sets to fulfill their backers and have some extras in inventory: see https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2641653/article/37954631#37954631 . They still have some of the 18Cash chips in stock, and you can buy them here: https://mercurygames.com/product/just-18cash/ . However, they're now sold out of the 18Shares chips.
I thought this might be of interest to some of you, in case, like me, you hadn't heard about them before.
In short: "18Cash" is a set of ceramic poker chips designed by @Johnny5 intended to be used for 18XX board games ("train games"). Holy Cow these chips look amazing! Design by J5, train illustrations by Przemek Kozlowski:
The folks producing these chips, Mercury Games, are also producing a related set of ceramic poker chips they call "18Shares", which are intended to replace the paper stock certificates normally used in train games. These shares chips are 47mm ceramics; the idea is that when it's time to pay out money for each share owned, you can stack the dividends (using the 39mm cash chips) on top of each share and thereby easily tell who's been paid so far:
Mercury Games ran a Kickstarter in April 2021 to produce these, but they canceled it in May; they couldn't get enough backers due to high costs and limited marketing opportunities due to Covid. See https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ares-make-your-18xx-even-better/posts/3185532
Judging by a few comments I've seen on BGG and Reddit, it seems most train gamers were underwhelmed with the concept and very dissuaded by the cost. Apache's Bank was often mentioned as a much lower cost and still highly suitable alternative. Plus, most train gamers by now have already found a poker chip set that they're happy with, whether it's Bank or dice chips. Adding something attractive to bling out their set seems to be a lower priority than simply continuing to use something functional, especially given the cost.
I'm not a train gamer, but if I ever were to pick up the 18XX hobby (and I might!) then I would buy a set of these J5 ceramics in a heartbeat. But it seems that that's just me. Alas.
Mercury did move forward with production, and made enough sets to fulfill their backers and have some extras in inventory: see https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2641653/article/37954631#37954631 . They still have some of the 18Cash chips in stock, and you can buy them here: https://mercurygames.com/product/just-18cash/ . However, they're now sold out of the 18Shares chips.
I thought this might be of interest to some of you, in case, like me, you hadn't heard about them before.
