Another Sconny "chip-head".... (1 Viewer)

[MrWookie69]

Hello from Wisconsin. Found this groovy community from Jon....John?.....MrHobbyPhilic on the Tubes.... apparently a Milwaukean... REALLY cool. ...Fine ales. Fine Sausages. Fine Poker Chips... I feel like I'm leaving something out...

...Bear with me, as I have no idea how long I'm going to ramble on - I can be real wordy. This could get bad....

Anyway.

Like everyone else [I'm sure], my friends and I gambled a lot amongst each other with crappy wafer thin poker chips. ....that carried over into college with a new crew; for our first two years, every Wednesday night turned into a long night of gambling for the weekend's beer money. ...or....gambling it away. LOL not surprisingly...with wafer thin Poker Chips.

....in college, I majored in Fine Art, with a concentration in Graphic Design. I was a graphic designer for my first 15 years out of school, I'm now a photographer, but still do work as an independent designer for small businesses. Loved the work, but really hated the ridiculous "agency life"....

I don't remember the exact date, but a group of us high school buddies finally ventured into Rainbow Casino in Nekoosa, WI to play some blackjack. ...few more of the daring dudes had already begun this journey, and they asked a few of us if we wanted to join. So I grabbed a handful of Andrew Jacksons, and off we went. ROAD TRIP! .....tangent.....Of course on our drive there, Camp Douglas was running low level fighter runs over the area. Multiple fighters flew a few hundred feet over our cars as we drove through the Wood County Wildlife area on HWY 173. Freaking cool, if not a bit unnerving.

....the funny thing is, I'm generally not that talkative in person. But get me behind a keyboard, and I'm like a Bugatti on the Autobahn....

Rainbow Casino was the first time I ever played with Casino Chips. OH! These were very different. Very cool. Groovy design.

From that point on, we ventured around to local area Wisconsin and Minnesota casinos: Ho-Chunk in the Dells of Wisconsin, Majestic Pines in Black River Falls, WI Treasure Island in Red Wing, MN, Casino Queen in Prairie Du Chien, WI. The two we typically visited were the Rainbow Casino and Ho-Chunk. Eventually Ho-Chunk took over the Rainbow Casino and added a few others over the years. I really liked the Ho-Chunk chips back in the 90's.

In summers, the HS buddies would get together and play cards at home with my parent's wafer thin chips, and it just sucked. From the 90's on, after our first trip to the Rainbow Casino in Nekoosa, I wanted a good set of casino chips.

...which makes me ponder; "I really wish I had started collecting those casino chips back in the 90's"...

Fast forward a few years, and I bought these...

for us high school buddies, as we grew older. ...they were certainly better than the plastic wafer thins, but still very unsatisfying.

Then a galactic time jump, and I bought these....

The dice chips. Still not the "Casino Chips", but much more satisfying than the previous two sets of chips we had. ...and I've lived with these for a quite a long time. Feels like it's pushing 15 years?

Still doesn't scratch that itch to get a good set of casino quality poker chips, and I had pretty much given up on trying to find out how. In the past, I had asked Ho-Chunk if they sold their old de-commissioned chips, and they said no. ...I don't even know if the casinos are required to destroy their chips by law. Eventually moved on to another hobby that I had desperately wanted to scratch... will explain that in another post explaining my user namer.

But here I am today. I don't even know how I found my way back to this path - what triggered this. ...maybe it was my kiddo starting to play cards with his neighborhood friends (they're 12-14), and they dug out these old dice chips a few weeks ago. I know I googled "casino chips", and found a bunch of options on Amazon. Found a Reddit Page with the same question, and that led me to Apache Poker Chips, which led me to HobbyPhilic's YouTube channel, and thus this new rabbit hole has been dug...

So this week led me to finding yet another cool online niche community I had no idea existed (similar to another one I'll explain later). I didn't immediately join, but this new itch as gotten the better of me.

Now I find out; not only can I get a cool set of Casino style chips (ceramic or china clays), or really....I could buy used legit Paulson casino chips........or........or I can literally custom design my own ceramic or....classic poker chips. ...which I've already begun with the latter. And damn, I have a pretty cool idea, and I want to talk with CPC about this design, and maybe doing a limited run for this community. I have a good feeling some of you would be excited about this.

Old searches of mine that have drifted off, eventually became a reality - like my Cougar Valley 8 dart board. I searched high and low for the longest time to find this old board we used to play in northern Wisconsin back in the mid 90's. It's still the best feeling, sounding and most satisfying dart board I've ever played.

...and now I'm back on to the Casino Chip wagon. Already started a new little collection of chips. And while a lot of people, HobbyPhilic, like collecting the old Vegas Casino chips - I'm really into collecting the old Wisconsin Casino chips. ...will be grabbing a little set in the Minocqua area this weekend.

So yeah! That ended up pretty long.

Cheers, everyone.

Chewy

 

[Tommy]

Great first post. Welcome to Poker Chip Forum!

 

[Juvalien]

Welcome here

 

[Fran]

Welcome to PCF !

 

[BPTDirector]

Welcome. Deepest regrets to your financial stability, you will find out what I mean. Have fun!!

 

[quixotemi]

Welcome to PCF!

 

[Machine]

Welcome!
​

I have a few links in my signature you might enjoy (landscape on mobile)

 

[MrWookie69]

Welcome. Deepest regrets to your financial stability, you will find out what I mean. Have fun!!

I currently collect these....

...authentic cast Original Trilogy Star Wars helmet replicas. ...these aren't cheap. ...so there's the reveal of the origins of my user name. Glad that's out of the way. LOL

And I have a raging case of GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) for photography.

so... I've been living in a well of financial instability for quite a while.

 

[SteveEH]

Sounds like the "wafer thin" chips you mentioned were Interlocking? Back in the 80s I skipped these for some "high end" plastic top hats (at least they weren't wafer thin):

For custom CPCs, get color samples (the colors on the design tool vary on different screens) and look at them in different lighting, get shuffle stacks of the molds you're considering for your theme, look in the chip DB and HoF to see what's been done here, reach out to the community for guidance, and don't rush the process. These chips will last a lifetime.

Welcome

 

[Tonysquander]

Welcome to PCF!

 

[MrWookie69]

Sounds like the "wafer thin" chips you mentioned were Interlocking? Back in the 80s I skipped these for some "high end" plastic top hats (at least they weren't wafer thin):

View attachment 1340855

For custom CPCs, get color samples (the colors on the design tool vary on different screens) and look at them in different lighting, get shuffle stacks of the molds you're considering for your theme, look in the chip DB and HoF to see what's been done here, reach out to the community for guidance, and don't rush the process. These chips will last a lifetime.

Welcome

Those old wafer thin chips were my dad’s. So they probably date back to the late 60’s or early 70’s, when they used to have a monthly poker night back in the day.

 

[allforcharity]

Hello and welcome!

 

[indemans]

Welcome!

 

[digirati]

Welcome to PCF!

 

[Just1Better]

Hello and welcome!

 

[MrWookie69]

I ventured over to Apache Poker Chips and loaded up on samples. While I’ll likely never purchase slug loaded ABS chips. I wanted to know how they felt in comparison the Ceramics, China Clays, and Paulson’s. I would also like a sample of Classic Poker Chips, to get a good feel of those as well. Will place an order for those next week.

 

[Benjaminotaur]

Hello and welcome from Kenosha!

 

[BottomPair7]

Hello and welcome to PCF!

 

[MrWookie69]

Hello and welcome from Kenosha!

Duuuuude. Right up I-94 from you.

In unrelated news:

Just picked up a little stack of well-worn 5’s from Lake of the Torches today. Didn’t expect these to be Paulson chips. I was half expecting these chips to be full print ceramics for some reason.

>>>>>Which leads me to my first big question…

Does Wisconsin law require casinos to destroy their old chips?

 

[MrWookie69]

…and before I forget. I’m staying in a cabin a few minutes south of Lake of the Torches, and the cabin has….

Wait for it…

Old “mildly-user” paper poker chips.

 

[MrWookie69]

The kids and I were comparing the sound of the Domino chips (bright and clicky) vs the LotT casino Paulson chips (soft and clacky).

At one time, my domino chips had a satisfying sound. Now that they can compared to clay casino chips, not so much. My kids preferred the sound of Paulsons, saying they were “very satisfying”. They arrived at this decision on their own, when they heard me playing with the chips - I agreed.

Side story — A tiny largie, who had zero business biting a bait 3” longer than its own body, split this well used Bizz Baits Baby Bass Sassy Stick.

I found this interesting.

I did not expect the dice chips to be noticeably smaller than the LotT casino chip. I do not have any tools to measure the size of these chips. Will figure that out when I get home.

Fun distractions on vacation.

Ok. My post is getting exceedingly long with a tangent, so I’m cutting it off here and starting another post. No. I’m not padding. Just splitting two totally different thoughts into two separate posts (this is for you “fussy bean counters“).

And yeah. This is a deep rabbit hole. …how many endless rabbit holes must one venture into?

Japanese cooking knives (ChefKnivesToGo) is a big one. So many knife styles - I’m a huge fan of the Bunka and Honesuki.

My Star Wars helmet collection has been a very fun adventure. Vader, Stormtroopers, Fett, Biker Scout, Tie Pilot, ATAT Pilot (just jumped on a legit ATAT run a couple of months ago), Snowtrooper (have to order this at some point)…

Grills and outdoor cooking. Though I had to stop at one.

Fishing gear…

And now Casino Chips. Ffffffuuuuuu. Make it stop.

 

[MrWookie69]

OK! So here’s the rabbit hole reference from my last post that I chose to split off. I’m sure I’ll have a tangent below…

…I continue to plan my personal chip design, and I can get real fussy here (with the design).

And I’m still debating if I want to do a group buy (limited run of 10, 20 or maybe 25 sets), ….or keep it all to myself.

I noticed Classic Poker Chips message “needing orders” on their vender page from last fall. Me being a small independent business, myself, and a big supporter of small businesses when and where I can help, if can do something worthy that has enough interest, and help Classic Poker Chips stay open, I’m all for it. So I’m definitely leaning towards a “Limited Run”.

So what I might do is have CPC run my set, and if there’s enough interest, let them take new orders on my design. Might let them decide how they’d want to do this. Post the design first? Or do a sample run first? Ugh. Logistics. Whatever CPC thinks is best, I’ll go with it.

It really won’t take long to get this design together once I start hashing it out… the decision process, however, could take a bit. …I tend to get in my own way, so I can’t make a final decision on which final direction I want to go - before I just sit down and crank it out. Analysis Paralysis = I hate being my own client.

One of the hard parts is picking a mold design - as the mold I had thought of was pretty particular. Right now, I think I can make DIECAR or B Diamond molds work with my concept.

I’m going to design this around the level 2 mark, with one of the molds above, so the pricing doesn’t skyrocket if someone wants to order 500+ pieces.

I’m tend to gravitate towards simplicity and nuance anyway, so this should be in my wheelhouse.


Oh boy! Another tangent…

I thought I’d leave this here - because who doesn’t love a good poker pic?

Ok. Good is a bit much.

This is a stock photo I stumbled across. And what I find amusing, is a photographer thought it would be badass to use dice chips in this photo.

To be fair, I’m not as “anti-dice chips” as most here. They aren’t nearly as bad as some people pretend. And yes, I get the whole “you like what like”. Some people simply can’t afford $125 for a set of Monte Carlo slug chips, so I really don’t want to rain their parade.

My complaint with the photo, is the photographer not putting in any effort to at least buy something resembling a custom house chip. There are a ton of fairly inexpensive plastic slug chips (Monte Carlo?) with some sort of interesting design. …I won’t even get into the table, much less his Swisher Sweet. …any way. This photo just humored me WAY too much this morning.

Back to over-thinking my chip design. I’ll finally sit down and start hashing it out in a week or so. Right now, when I have time, I’m playing around with the chip colors and molds, inserts, edge color combos.

Really F’N excited about this now. I’ve had this idea in my head for such a LONG time, but had no idea there was a way to make it happen. Shit. I hope I can afford this.

Cheers and stay tuned.

Chewy

 

[InsydeStr8]

Welcome and yes, once you play with real chips, you just have to get a set for yourself! I love the Bugatti on the Autobahn metaphor!

 

[TheJestyr]

I loved reading this. I don’t feel so alone in being so obsessive lol and I love the Star Wars stuff! I feel like in another life we’d have been best friends

Welcome to PCF! I’ve enjoyed seeing a lot of your designs so far! Can’t wait to see what else you come up with

 

[Sparkynutz]

Welcome!
If you're ever in the Fond du lac area hit me up. Or if you'd wanna play some cards when I'm in Minocqua for our yearly camping trip. I'd love to talk chips, Star Wars and fishing!

 

[detroitdad]

Hello from Wisconsin. Found this groovy community from Jon....John?.....MrHobbyPhilic on the Tubes.... apparently a Milwaukean... REALLY cool. ...Fine ales. Fine Sausages. Fine Poker Chips... I feel like I'm leaving something out...

...Bear with me, as I have no idea how long I'm going to ramble on - I can real wordy. This could get bad....

Anyway.

Like everyone else [I'm sure], my friends and I gambled a lot amongst each other with crappy wafer thin poker chips. ....that carried over into college with a new crew; for our first two years, every Wednesday night turned into a long night of gambling for the weekend's beer money. ...or....gambling it away. LOL not surprisingly...with wafer thin Poker Chips.

....in college, I majored in Fine Art, with a concentration in Graphic Design. I was a graphic designer for my first 15 years out of school, I'm now a photographer, but still do work as an independent designer for small businesses. Loved the work, but really hated the ridiculous "agency life"....

I don't remember the exact date, but a group of us high school buddies finally ventured into Rainbow Casino in Nekoosa, WI to play some blackjack. ...few more of the daring dudes had already begun this journey, and they asked a few of us if we wanted to join. So I grabbed a handful of Andrew Jacksons, and off we went. ROAD TRIP! .....tangent.....Of course on our drive there, Camp Douglas was running low level fighter runs over the area. Multiple fighters flew a few hundred feet over our cars as we drove through the Wood County Wildlife area on HWY 173. Freaking cool, if not a bit unnerving.

....the funny thing is, I'm generally not that talkative in person. But get me behind a keyboard, and I'm like a Bugatti on the Autobahn....

Rainbow Casino was the first time I ever played with Casino Chips. OH! These were very different. Very cool. Groovy design.

From that point on, we ventured around to local area Wisconsin and Minnesota casinos: Ho-Chunk in the Dells of Wisconsin, Majestic Pines in Black River Falls, WI Treasure Island in Red Wing, MN, Casino Queen in Prairie Du Chien, WI. The two we typically visited were the Rainbow Casino and Ho-Chunk. Eventually Ho-Chunk took over the Rainbow Casino and added a few others over the years. I really liked the Ho-Chunk chips back in the 90's.

In summers, the HS buddies would get together and play cards at home with my parent's wafer thin chips, and it just sucked. From the 90's on, after our first trip to the Rainbow Casino in Nekoosa, I wanted a good set of casino chips.

...which makes me ponder; "I really wish I had started collecting those casino chips back in the 90's"...

Fast forward a few years, and I bought these...

View attachment 1340812

for us high school buddies, as we grew older. ...they were certainly better than the plastic wafer thins, but still very unsatisfying.

Then a galactic time jump, and I bought these....

View attachment 1340813

The dice chips. Still not the "Casino Chips", but much more satisfying than the previous two sets of chips we had. ...and I've lived with these for a quite a long time. Feels like it's pushing 15 years?

Still doesn't scratch that itch to get a good set of casino quality poker chips, and I had pretty much given up on trying to find out how. In the past, I had asked Ho-Chunk if they sold their old de-commissioned chips, and they said no. ...I don't even know if the casinos are required to destroy their chips by law. Eventually moved on to another hobby that I had desperately wanted to scratch... will explain that in another post explaining my user namer.

But here I am today. I don't even know how I found my way back to this path - what triggered this. ...maybe it was my kiddo starting to play cards with his neighborhood friends (they're 12-14), and they dug out these old dice chips a few weeks ago. I know I googled "casino chips", and found a bunch of options on Amazon. Found a Reddit Page with the same question, and that led me to Apache Poker Chips, which led me to HobbyPhilic's YouTube channel, and thus this new rabbit hole has been dug...

So this week led me to finding yet another cool online niche community I had no idea existed (similar to another one I'll explain later). I didn't immediately join, but this new itch as gotten the better of me.

Now I find out; not only can I get a cool set of Casino style chips (ceramic or china clays), or really....I could buy used legit Paulson casino chips........or........or I can literally custom design my own ceramic or....classic poker chips. ...which I've already begun with the latter. And damn, I have a pretty cool idea, and I want to talk with CPC about this design, and maybe doing a limited run for this community. I have a good feeling some of you would be excited about this.

Old searches of mine that have drifted off, eventually became a reality - like my Cougar Valley 8 dart board. I searched high and low for the longest time to find this old board we used to play in northern Wisconsin back in the mid 90's. It's still the best feeling, sounding and most satisfying dart board I've ever played.

View attachment 1340840

...and now I'm back on to the Casino Chip wagon. Already started a new little collection of chips. And while a lot of people, HobbyPhilic, like collecting the old Vegas Casino chips - I'm really into collecting the old Wisconsin Casino chips. ...will be grabbing a little set in the Minocqua area this weekend.

So yeah! That ended up pretty long.

Cheers, everyone.

Chewy

Welcome. We call these lengthy posts Ben books.

@Ben8257

 

[MrWookie69]

Welcome!
If you're ever in the Fond du lac area hit me up. Or if you'd wanna play some cards when I'm in Minocqua for our yearly camping trip. I'd love to talk chips, Star Wars and fishing!

We typically spend an early to mid-week June trip to Minocqua for an end-of-school year fishing trip. Of course we chose the week of the Mayfly hatch, which shut down the fishing for five days - and it happened almost immediately the moment the Mayflies appeared on the surface of the water. Had a great trip, we did catch fish, but really had to work for it, and ate WAY too much ice cream...

I'd love to play some cards, talk poker chips, fishing, and Star Wars...

 

[MrBoosh]

I currently collect these....

View attachment 1340852

...authentic cast Original Trilogy Star Wars helmet replicas. ...these aren't cheap. ...so there's the reveal of the origins of my user name. Glad that's out of the way. LOL

Hello and welcome to the community! I went ahead and fixed your photo to better reflect your full username origin story!

 

[Trihonda]

Welcome fellow cheese head!!! In the Madison area but we hav a cabin in Mercer.

I use to host an annual meetup, and our last one was the "Northwoods" edition (at our lake house).

I host regularly in the Madison area. Low stakes and we use nice gear. We have amazing player pool (lots of fun) in case you're ever in the Madison area.

 

[MrWookie69]

Welcome fellow cheese head!!! In the Madison area but we hav a cabin in Mercer.

I use to host an annual meetup, and our last one was the "Northwoods" edition (at our lake house). <-------- HMMMMMMM! That gives me an idea...

I host regularly in the Madison area. Low stakes and we use nice gear. We have amazing player pool (lots of fun) in case you're ever in the Madison area.

Very cool. I'm not too far from Madison, so if the timing works out, it would be cool to jump in.

Haven't made it to Mercer yet, but I have a burning itch to paddle the Fisher Lake/Catherine Lake chain of lakes, and spend a week fishing - Likely staying at the Island View Lodge...

Picked up a set of Sevenwinds $5 chips in Hayward last weekend - as I continue my Wisconsin Casino chip souvies. ...first set of smooth/slippery ceramic chips I've seen from a WI casino.