Vintage HUB Mold MD-44: Decent Chip? (1 Viewer)

PokerDogDoc

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I have the opportunity to buy some vintage Mason and Company HUB mold (MD-44) hot stamp chips.
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I’m not familiar with them, so I’m curious as to what kind of characteristics I should expect?

Approximate weight?
Feel?
Decent chip for home games?
Reasonable price per chip?

Thanks!
 
Thanks, @allforcharity… Any info on typical chip weight, feel, etc?
Feel like clay? “plasticky”? etc
 
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Many Hub mold chips are in the 8 and 9 gram range. I do have some that are 10+ grams but but maybe only 20% of all the Hub mold chips I have encountered in 20+ years collecting.

What is on the other side of Hub mold chips you are considering buying?
 
I agree with Luke that many of the hub molds are lighter. Here are some Ive had and still have. The heavier hub molds the rectangle in the mold is narrower toward the middle than the lighter ones. More square-like=lighter. ( And Luke, message me )-

Just found them on eBay- these are the lighter ones. Less expensive chips, IMO.

The first and last pictures are the heavier hub molds.
 

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They are on eBay and I’m eyeballing them.

From my internet sleuthing, it references The 40/8, aka The Forty and Eight, aka The Society of Forty Men and Eight Horses. This is a shortened reference and translation of the French “La Societe des Quarante Hommes et Huit Chevaux”, which was an “honor society” of sorts for leaders of the American Legion formed in 1920 after World War I, and continued adding members through WW II and beyond.

Although American war veterans, they used (and still use) French in their formal society name and officer titles to reference their time serving overseas there. The name “Forty and Eight” comes from what was emblazoned (in French) on the side of the rail cars that took the soldiers to the battlefront and indicated their capacity—each rail car could hold 40 men and 8 horses.

In keeping within the theme, the various local groups of the 40/8 around the US again referenced the French rail cars, calling their local groups “voitures” instead of “posts”— voiture is the French word for car.

So these chips apparently came from Voiture 418 of the 40/8, and I know lots of these war service organizations had big card playing “clubs”. I’ve got an email into the 40/8 to ask where this voiture was located as it’s not currently listed on their site, and likely is shut down or renumbered when the 40/8 split from the American Legion in 1959. The seller bought them at an estate sale and knows no history, not even what I dug up.

Interestingly, the 40/8 worked to ensure that WW II servicemen had playing cards to help pass the time on transport ships (their equivalent to rail cars) and eventually distributed more than 4 million decks by the end of the war!
 
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To me, they seem to be the trapezoid (not true rectangle) version mentioned below, although it could just be a trick of perspective and camera angle in the picture I posted
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They have a fantastic sound to them splashing the pot. A little higher pitched than Paulsons. They also tend to be really nice if you're a chip shuffler, as years of play will give them a nice uniformly rounded edge. Watch for spinners however. If they were exposed to humidity or temperature extremes these can turn into Pringles. See if there are any good pics of the edges on eBay or ask the seller for some.
 
Mason & Co, the company that owned the Hub Mold, had their chips made in at least three different standard weights.

In the late 1920s, they began with hub mold chips that generally weighed in the 8 to 9 gram range. During the mid-1930s, they introduced a slightly heavier hub chips (9-10 gram range) that they internally called "B-10", and they began to refer to the lighter chips as "B-9". Finally, in the 1950s, they introduced even heavier hub chips (10-11 gram range) which they referred to as "B-11". Even during the 1950s and 1960s, however, most of the chips they sold were the lighter B-9 chips.

The Mason hub mold records (for thousands of chip orders) have been preserved by the Nevada Historical Society and most of the ones for chips already posted on the ChipGuide have been uploaded there during the last year. Below are two random Mason order cards from the ChipGuide. You can see where those standard weight designations are placed. If the cards for your chips were posted on the ChipGuide, you could look up the weight, and other details about the chips.

1633050047279.jpg


Also, the more trapezoid shaped hub mold chips begin to appear after 1950. My impression is that they slowly replaced the worn out rectangular hub mold cups with new ones that were shaped very slightly differently. For that reason there is a higher probability that slightly trapezoid hub chips will be heavier, but they can also still be the lighter B-9 weight ones.

I hope that helps.
 
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I have the opportunity to buy some vintage Mason and Company HUB mold (MD-44) hot stamp chips.
View attachment 786510

I’m not familiar with them, so I’m curious as to what kind of characteristics I should expect?

Approximate weight?
Feel?
Decent chip for home games?
Reasonable price per chip?

Thanks!
Thanks for starting the thread. The history alone makes these a tempting buy. Hope you won the auction and can enjoy these beauties!
 
Yeah, that’s nuts unless someone has some sentimental value tied to these.

I never even put in a bid they got so high.
 

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