Any suggestions for freight forwarders? Or specific vendors to trust for quality goods on Alibaba?
It's not trivial to do the importation yourself.
I've been down that road before with a huge chip order. I strongly advise against it.
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I'd like to offer custom chips to my customers who buy tables as it's become a common request. However, with the vast array of different types of chips available, I tend to overwhelm the customer with too many options. I'd like to offer a base chip which is a china clay with a custom label (which I'll get from Gear Labels). I really like the mold/chip which is used for the Pharaoh club chips which is also used for a few different other sets. I'd like to know where I can get them unlabeled in bulk. I would probably buy a few thousand of each color and store them until needed. I asked PGI already and they say they don't sell them.
First place I'd contact is Trademark Poker, and see if they currently carry any china clay lines (blanks or otherwise). Your easiest option may be the Progen80 line of chips, which are a lower-tier china clay in my opinion (inferior materials, inferior mold), but are somewhat readily-available, inexpensive, and sold with no labels.
FWIW, the mold and spot configurations/colors used for the china clay Pharaoh's Club are only used for that specific chip, and are not available as blanks (unless Jim @ thechproom wanted to place a specific order for pharaoh's mold blanks to his Chinese factory contact, and that would probably require approval by TenPercenter, the chiptalk.net admin/owner). The minimum order quantity is probably much higher than you are willing to buy, however. The last quote I got from China was for 30,000 chips minimum, with price breaks at 60,000 and 100,000 chips.