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Are There Decent Quality Miniature Poker Chips? (1 Viewer)

Hairy_Crocodile

Hairy_Crocodile

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Hey all!

Are there any makers of decent quality miniature poker chips? I know that the super cheap lightweight plastic ones exist, but are there any makers of higher quality ones than those?
I like the idea of having a small set to carry around my backpack for when I travel to see friends and such.

No real practical reason to want/have them, but I wanna know if they exist...especially if someone makes ceramic ones :bigbucks:
 
If you cant use regular full-sized chips, why not just use coins?
I can’t imagine using mini chips, ceramic or otherwise, would be a very pleasurable poker experience.
 
Colquhoun said:
If you cant use regular full-sized chips, why not just use coins?
I can’t imagine using mini chips, ceramic or otherwise, would be a very pleasurable poker experience.
Click to expand...
I guess, due to my inexperience, I don't know what a proper travel set would be, how many of each chip, and how to break it down for each player. I made a cheat sheet for personal reference to remind my players and I of blinds and the "starting stacks" for each buy-in for my 800 set. I was always under the impression that I needed minimum of like 300 chips for 6 players. I guess thats my inexperience and the "just get more chips attitude" that I've had to lean on before I came to the forums.

My friends vary from $10, $25, $50 buy-ins so I would assume that non denom chips would be best to accommodate the different denoms they like to play with.
$10 buy ins would have $0.05s, $0.25s, $1s
$25 buy ins would have $0.25s, $1s, and $5s
$50 buy ins would have $0.25s, $1s, $5s, and 25's
$100 buy ins (If I got that far) would have $0.50s, $1s, $5s, $25s, $100s

Maybe I could research travel kits a little more, I gotta research nice travel cases too then so i can travel in style :cool
 
I wonder how many random shuffle stack orders that company gets on Xmas Eve this year.
 
Hairy_Crocodile said:
I guess, due to my inexperience, I don't know what a proper travel set would be, how many of each chip, and how to break it down for each player. I made a cheat sheet for personal reference to remind my players and I of blinds and the "starting stacks" for each buy-in for my 800 set. I was always under the impression that I needed minimum of like 300 chips for 6 players. I guess thats my inexperience and the "just get more chips attitude" that I've had to lean on before I came to the forums.

My friends vary from $10, $25, $50 buy-ins so I would assume that non denom chips would be best to accommodate the different denoms they like to play with.
$10 buy ins would have $0.05s, $0.25s, $1s
$25 buy ins would have $0.25s, $1s, and $5s
$50 buy ins would have $0.25s, $1s, $5s, and 25's
$100 buy ins (If I got that far) would have $0.50s, $1s, $5s, $25s, $100s

Maybe I could research travel kits a little more, I gotta research nice travel cases too then so i can travel in style :cool
Click to expand...
Oh, so you’re not looking for mini CHIPS, you’re looking for a mini SET of regular sized chips? I thought you wanted little chips:
E517E76D-68BE-4A49-88E0-50E03F62253B.jpeg

:ROFL: :ROFLMAO:
As far as a small travel set goes, I’ll let others more knowledgeable about stack size and quantities chime in here...but I will recommend not needing a .50 chip if you’ve already got a .25 in the set. Simply not needed.
 
If you need travel set get some plastic chips that are light. That does not mean that they have to be low quality. Go for Bud Jones maybe. More important will be carry case. Got to be light and resistant. There are threads on PCF on the matter in hand.
You say miniature chips, do you mean less than 30 mm diameter? Never seen any and I belive they could be less than handy. If you want them anyway I would suggest some fractional currency made of brass (Polish could be handy). Just remember that they are made of same material so it would be hard estimate size of pot.
 
Colquhoun said:
Oh, so you’re not looking for mini CHIPS, you’re looking for a mini SET of regular sized chips? I thought you wanted little chips:
View attachment 601124
:ROFL: :ROFLMAO:
As far as a small travel set goes, I’ll let others more knowledgeable about stack size and quantities chime in here...but I will recommend not needing a .50 chip if you’ve already got a .25 in the set. Simply not needed.
Click to expand...
I needed that laugh, today was stressful :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:
However I do agree that having both denoms would be a redundant. I was thinking about using non-denom chips so that my blue chips could be either $0.25 or $0.50 for different blinds and maintain some flexibility, and be different denoms for different buy ins. $10/$25/$50 all use quarters, $100 buy in uses $0.50s, so Id just use my blues as either denom for whatever buy-in we end up doing possibly
 
I agree with above statements... there are a couple cheaper options but I love 36mm Paulsons… as far as a mini game set up with enough back bone I did a quick 6 player breakdown for $20 buy ins

Starting stacks of 15 ($.05)/ 13 ($.25)/11 ($1)/1 ($5) Rebuys 1 - 6 would be 5 ($1)/ 3 ($5) Rebuys 7-12 would be 4 ($5) Rebuys 13 - 24 would be 1 ($20)

Full set you would need 90 ($.05) 78 ($.25) 98 ($1) 48 ($5) 12 ($20) or 326 total chips... That obviously could be adjusted any way you would like say maybe just the first 3 rebuys would get 5 - $1s to cut down on the overall chip count, also more $20s and less $5s as typically a micro game will not play that big (just suggestions to try and get this down to 300 chips... less than that would not be advised). I just prefer to have the chips if needed... This depends on your players, but those would be very playable starting stacks!

good luck, sounds like a fun little set for sure! Fellow Chipper Ben
 
Its not what you are looking for but still kind of fits in this thread. Friend of mine is making these:
mini-poker---handgefertigte-miniatur-pokertische---002.jpg
 
ekricket said:
I’ve seen some miniature dice chips, and I have several small “slot” machine leather bound sets with miniature chips.

The dice chips were “seconds” if I remember correctly, can’t seem to find them though.

here’s some others
https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-SM...295098?hash=item3436b780ba:g:6qMAAOSwFf1fqGhp

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-Poker...929729?hash=item2897c481c1:g:f4MAAOSwuEhfCMtM
Click to expand...
Seems odd Kevin that the first set looks like it has wobblers mixed in there... wouldn't expect that, but awesome little set especially for the price! That box is bad ass!!
 
The "minimum" number of chips you will need is not only determined by the number of players (you mentioned 6), but also the range of stakes that you want to spread. If you want $0.05 denoms all the way to $100, then you'll need a lot more chips in your travel set than if you only wanted $1 through $25. Covering nickels through hundos even with 6 players would easily hit 400 chips, and you'd have to be quite frugal with your breakdowns.
 
I remember seeing a couple sets of the Poker Stars mini sets for sale somewhere a while ago. Thought they were kind of cool.
1608834827584.png
 
I once offered to make a "Camping Set" of poker chips for a guy in Ukraine. I was going to use those super thin, lightweight acetate chips (interlocking FTW!) in the only three colours that they come in and use a 1 1/2" piece of ABS pipe for the carrying case.

I'll look for the pictures and specs.
 
Well, that was easy. BTW, these ARE NOT quality chips. However, the price is right. The idea was to have a lightweight set contained in a tough tube of minimal size.

Who else has some of these beauties?:

00f0b07cec3dfb3b1b72e4330ffd1933.png


Although the picture shows four colours, I wouldn't bet on being able to tell the "Yellow" from the "White" under camping lighting conditions.


Here is the stack height compared to minty Paulsons:

e8e5147fc1d3f030c6aa00bdfddbbf13.jpg


A barrel of these weighs about 50g and is only about 5.5 cm tall.

I was aiming for a four man tourney set. If you could alter some chips to make a higher denom, then you could avoid the dreaded colour up involving using the smallest denom colour for the new higher denom. 100 of these babies are only about 11 inches stacked.
 
Last edited:
mtl mile end said:
Well, that was easy. BTW, these ARE NOT quality chips. However, the price is right. The idea was to have a lightweight set contained in a tough tube of minimal size.

Who else has some of these beauties?:
Click to expand...
I do! But I hadn't intended to. I was just starting out and wanted to build a collection of vintage Catalin chips. This was before I learned that sellers on eBay have absolutely no idea what it is that they're actually listing.

I bought a caddy with 200 of these based on the seller calling them "vintage" and "Catalin". But they're not; they're polystyrene, and the vintage is approximately 1970s rather than 1930s-1940s for Catalin chips. I mean, that's still vintage, just the wrong vintage for what I was looking for. The brand name these were sold under is "Catalox" (which was probably chosen to sound like the earlier Catalin) and you can get them pretty cheap on eBay.

They have a marbelized appearance, which again harkens back to the older Catalin chips. They do look kinda neat.

They're very light. The interlocking ridges helps them stack, but it also makes them harder to handle in my (limited) experience.
 
CrazyEddie said:
I do! But I hadn't intended to. I was just starting out and wanted to build a collection of vintage Catalin chips. This was before I learned that sellers on eBay have absolutely no idea what it is that they're actually listing.

I bought a caddy with 200 of these based on the seller calling them "vintage" and "Catalin". But they're not; they're polystyrene, and the vintage is approximately 1970s rather than 1930s-1940s for Catalin chips. I mean, that's still vintage, just the wrong vintage for what I was looking for. The brand name these were sold under is "Catalox" (which was probably chosen to sound like the earlier Catalin) and you can get them pretty cheap on eBay.

They have a marbelized appearance, which again harkens back to the older Catalin chips. They do look kinda neat.

They're very light. The interlocking ridges helps them stack, but it also makes them harder to handle in my (limited) experience.
Click to expand...
Ha! I was going to ask if anyone had purchased these as Catalin or Bakelite.

I thought the interlocking nature would make them more suitable for camping applications where they will be stacked on uneven surfaces and will be very light, but large surface area in the wind.
 
If weight is a premium (i.e. backpacking) then a set of Super Diamonds might be your friend. They're much lighter than clays, but still heavy enough to provide a nice feel when you handle them. They're full-sized, not miniature, so won't save you any space - but IMHO you'll appreciate playing with full-sized chips much more than with miniatures. Minis aren't going to stack very well and will be awkward to cut and count and pass around. Consider using a stripped-down distribution in order to save both space and weight; you'll make change more often, but you'll enjoy handling the chips more.

This recent thread has more discussion about a travel set; check it out.
 
The P* and Age of Steam chips appear to be from the same manufacturer as mine. Exact same mold, just different plastic colors and center print.
I wonder if whoever made these also does "stock sets" and not just collaboration products with other brands.
 

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