Cards mold ceramic chip comparisons (3 Viewers)

[Eloe2000]

I wasn't entirely sure where to put this, but I wanted a dedicated thread because of the demand of these chips and the volume of questions etc. spanning many group buys and many individual purchase decisions. Thanks to @Pinesol13 for sending me your amazing chips to photograph.

I wanted to say first of all that these are all fantastic chips in their own right and I think everyone who has received their chips has been pleasantly surprised. That being said, there are some minor differences. While I wouldn't say that one is better than the other, you certainly would not want to mix add-ons from company to a set from another.

Mold: The cards mold mold appears to be different to me. I did not realize with the naked eye, but after photographing up close it seems there are various differences Anita's chips have a slightly rounder card edge while Tina's cards impressions have sharper edges and the way the cards meet appears slightly different. The inner circle impression seems more broader on Anita's chips. The injection marks on Anita's chips are indents while on Tina's chips they extend outward.

Edges: Edges appeared sharper to the feel and sharper in photos up close on Tina's chips.

Color: This is the most obvious difference. In general, Anita's chips have a much more matte finish. It is the most matte finish of any ceramics that I have on hand or recall seeing. It is hard to explain but the color of Anita's chips have a very slightly more transparent appearance compared to Tina's. I would almost compare it to the way the materials and color looks between Paulson (Tina's) and CPC (Anita's) where the material that Paulson's have a more dense color. Tina's chips have a little more pop with the denser color. It would be hard to compare exact color matching because I did not have the same sets made by both manufacturers. Color spotting was an issue that Tina herself has mentioned. And you can see in the photos below that the color printing on Anita's chips are much more uniform with smooth printing with absolutely no color spotting issues. On Tina's chips you see color spotting (the non-uniform color printing hat appears to give the chips a textured look) on many of the chips across different colors. This is certainly noticeable in these photos, but in my opinion, is not a terrible flaw because in person it gives the chips a textured look. I noticed on some of the darker chips that the color was applied more thoroughly to the cards impression on Tina's chips than on Anita's chips so that the color on the impression was lighter on Anita's chips, more so inside the edges of the impressions.

Edge alignment: This is an issue related to the manually aligning of edges. It would be difficult to compare this on a small sample and this would vary from batch to batch due to operator error.

Again, these are all rather minor differences and there are pros and cons to each. I don't think anyone is going to be unhappy with any of these chips.

Various ceramics
Sunfly 43mm Hyrbids | Anita's 43mm | Anita's cards mold (new vendor) | Tina's cards mold (original vendor) | BrPro​

Anita's (new vendor) | Tina's (original cards mold vendor)

Anita's (new vendor) | Tina's (original cards mold vendor)​

Anita's (new vendor) | Tina's (original cards mold vendor)
​

 

[Jake14mw]

Wow, great job with the comparisons, this illustrates things very well! Very much appreciated!

 

[fishsaybloop]

thanks a lot for this, great macro shots btw

 

[Pinesol13]

Just want to mention this: I used the color pinwheels from the other manufacturer when choosing colors for my chips. Which was a big mistake, I didn't even consider that the colors would be so different from a different manufacturer. For this green chip pictured, the main chip color is A8, and the green spot, which is barely visible, is A2.

Whenever the next US group buy happens with the next manufacturer, I would be willing to purchase 25 of each color wheel and distribute to members here.

Live and learn!

 

[Eloe2000]

Just want to mention this: I used the color pinwheels from the other manufacturer when choosing colors for my chips. Which was a big mistake, I didn't even consider that the colors would be so different from a different manufacturer. For this green chip pictured, the main chip color is A8, and the green spot, which is barely visible, is A2.

View attachment 675984

View attachment 675989

Whenever the next US group buy happens with the next manufacturer, I would be willing to purchase 25 of each color wheel and distribute to members here.

Live and learn!

The color process with these manufacturers is still so baffling to me. I am assuming it’s the software they use where there is some level of subjective implementation.they just seem to get some colors so wrong. Even using the same CMYK codes based on Pantone colors from what run to another I would not have a high level of certainty that they would be the same. I just ordered reruns of my Casa Mangos for sample sets. Very curious to see how close the second run is.

 

[Beakertwang]

Thanks so much for this!

Tina’s colors are definitely more vibrant. How would you compare them regarding feel, handling, stacking, spinners, etc.?

 

[Eloe2000]

Thanks so much for this!

Tina’s colors are definitely more vibrant. How would you compare them regarding feel, handling, stacking, spinners, etc.?

They feel exactly the same to me. I thought they were the same exact chips at first (although I did feel like the edges were sharper on Tina’s). It wasn’t until I started photographing them that I realized they do appear to be different blanks. But no difference to me.

I have heard others mention spinners. I haven’t played with my set yet but I have photographed them quite a bit and handled them frequently and I didn’t notice any issues with spinners. I don’t see that bring an issue any more than with any other ceramics and I certainly don’t see why Tinas would differ from Anitas there.

 

[kmccormick100]

So to confirm all of the new Cards Mold orders are through Anita? The colors don't look nearly as good as Tina's, that might be a deal breaker...

 

[Eloe2000]

So to confirm all of the new Cards Mold orders are through Anita? The colors don't look nearly as good as Tina's, that might be a deal breaker...

People are ordering from both vendors. FWIW read my comments on color. While there is slightly less pop on the samples I had it is worth noting that I would classify both makers chips as colorful. Later today I will put both up against colorful Paulsons as a comparison. Also, Tina’s chips are widely prone to color spotting while Anita’s do not appear to have any instances of this.

 

[Pinesol13]

So to confirm all of the new Cards Mold orders are through Anita? The colors don't look nearly as good as Tina's, that might be a deal breaker...

This could be just a "me" problem. These sample photos that he took are all of my chips. As I said earlier, I used the color wheels from a different manufacturer for most of my color choices, so some of my colors are not what I was expecting. It's quite possible you could get colors that look just as good as Tina's.

 

[philhut]

Good side by side.

The colours on the Anita's are pretty good though in the comparison they do seem more muted. My wonky label design preferences aside the Anita's chips are great and the edge-spots are awesome and darn near perfectly aligned on every chip. The yellow on all of the chips is the same which works and i'm not sure if it was the choice of Pinsol13 who helped with the AI mockup design for submission using the same yellow colour and me not realizing that or if the yellow I got was the "yellow" of the day... They turned out great all the same. It would be good perhaps to post the producer with pictures. I just wish I could have had this set given to me about 20 years ago......

Anita's- these fit perfectly in 68mm racks

 

[philhut]

This could be just a "me" problem. These sample photos that he took are all of my chips. As I said earlier, I used the color wheels from a different manufacturer for most of my color choices, so some of my colors are not what I was expecting. It's quite possible you could get colors that look just as good as Tina's.

on your $25 chip was your goal offset edge spots using a 3 pip as the base and eliminated the 3rd by repeating the base colour? I can see how in similar colour wheels it would be easy to pick a similar base that is one shade off..... I'd roll with it and call it a security feature

 

[Pinesol13]

on your $25 chip was your goal offset edge spots using a 3 pip as the base and eliminated the 3rd by repeating the base colour? I can see how in similar colour wheels it would be easy to pick a similar base that is one shade off..... I'd roll with it and call it a security feature

No, not intentional at all. I mean to have that edgespot be a very dark green. It also happened on my pink chip, but not quite as bad.

also this really shouldn't reflect as a negative on the manufacturer. It happened mostly for two reasons:

1) I changed around my designs several times, leaving very little time for making changes after they made samples and sent photos. If I took the time to make changes after that, it would've delayed the whole group for a long time, and I didn't want to do that.

2) using color samples from a completely different manufacturer was not a wise choice


I will say that in the other group buy Tina reached out to Sean when she noticed that some of the text in my chips was not bold enough, I really liked that she took the initiative to say something. I wonder if this group buy went through her if she would've said something about the edgespots.

 

[Eloe2000]

2) using color samples from a completely different manufacturer was not a wise choice

Generally this should not happen with printed projects. Some of the colors that both manufacturers have printed have been pretty far off of their representation from a digital file. The output colors are drastically different from their CMYK given. I have worked with all kinds of printed products in my life and I have never come across a situation like this. Bare in mind that no one on Tina's side has color sample chips in the first large order of ~90,000 chips. Those color samples came out well after the bulk of the cards mold chips have hit the forum. Also, some of the color sample chip colors are wildly off of their digital display and digital CMYK representation.

 

[Raphmivey]

pretty there are not the same blanks. I have ordered from Anita and I have samples from Tina. Anita mold has matte finish on the edges. There are also more spinners unfortunately. Anita is much quicker and a little cheaper and there are no color spotting which, let be honest, is very bad.

 

[Jake14mw]

It's the sharper edges for me.

 

[Marius L]

Very interesting! The saturated colors on the Tina chips look great, but the color spotting might not make it worth it... On the other hand the Anitas are the oposite. Somewhat dull colors, but much less color spotting which gives them a nicer look.

Anyways, great shots and write up. Very useful info to have. Would you say some of the colors on Tina's chips have less color spotting than others? In other words, are the color spotting dependent on which color is used, or is it pretty much the same accross the board for all the colors?

 

[davislane]

Anyone have sunfly cards mold for comparison they can send to @Eloe2000 ?

 

[Eloe2000]

Comparison of some Anita’s chips alongside some really colorful Paulsons. Like I said above, even if Anita’s chips have slightly less pop than Tina’s, I would classify all of these chips as colorful.

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

To add to this topic, the differences I noticed between SunFly's Diamonds Mold and Tina's Diamonds Mold :
1) Tina's ones have sharper edges, they can stand on edge while the ones from SunFly are more rounded. Keep in mind that a ceramic edge will never really wear and then - personal opinion - I do prefer the slightly rounded edge.
2) Tina's ones have matte rolling edges while SF have glossy rolling edges.
3) SF ones have an excellent edge alignment. Tina's ones are mostly correct, few chips being sometimes quite off. Here a pic of the worst one I got from Tina.
4) I've never noticed one single spinner in my SF set. In my Tina's set, there were few spinners.

These are the differences I could notice.

 

[200 Motels]

Curious if a barrel of Tina's are the same height as a barrel of Anita's. Do Sunfly have a cards mold chip?

I'm satisfied with my Anita chips, very few spinners. The ones that do spin don't spin on the same level as Ceramic Scroll or dice chips. Edge alignment is excelleint.

Serious question though, what's "color spotting"?

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

Anyone have sunfly cards mold for comparison they can send to @Eloe2000 ?

I've none for spare (only a full set for sale) but I can take few shots.

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

Do Sunfly have a cards mold chip?

Yes, in their PolyClay lines, they have diamonds mold, cards mold, pattern mold (@Odranoel77 has ordered a custom set on this mold) and even a "Lucky Dragon" mold.

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

Regarding the colors, the good thing with SF is that you can use their "tested" color palette.

From experience, if you work with this palette (and communicate the CC colors you used on your chips while submitting the order), you'll get very reliable results.

Also, I've already order 2 separate add-on of an initial order and the color matching of the add-on with the initial batch were perfect.

 

[philhut]

Here is a colour issue that I honestly assumed could be an issue so made sure my colours were distinctly different....however when shades were slight different it appears that the producer "Anita" utilized the same colours in multiple areas. I have noticed similar colours on many other chips that could all coincidentally match colour choices but it seems possible that where reds are similar a single red pigment could be utilized for your set etc.... I find it flows just find but I also know this could make some people crazy so chip by chip I will illustrate how the same colours were repeated.....interestingly on the chips themselves the colours look different on some chips, notably the purple on the $20 it is the same purple on the $500 and $5000. Could be they only have so many colours and freestyle batches to approximate the colour chart. Anyone concerned with dirty stacks should be very careful in future designs to ensure each chip denomination above/below are quite different to as to avoid colour blending.

5cent

25cent

$1

$5

$20

$25

$100

$500

$1000

$5000

 

[Eloe2000]

Serious question though, what's "color spotting"?

See how the blue color and then the green color isn't uniform? Almost as if the ink doesn't uniformly adhere to the surface of the chip.

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

de

See how the blue color and then the green color isn't uniform? Almost as if the ink doesn't uniformly adhere to the surface of the chip.

View attachment 676695View attachment 676696

Very interesting !

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

I don't have a macro lens but tried to take some shots of my SunFly chips.

PolyClay Cards Mold

PolyClay Diamonds Mold

PolyInno (Hybrid) 43mm with 25.4mm laminated labels

 

[Senzrock]

@moechar

 

[moechar]

@moechar

Interesting... I'm wondering if there is a 43mm card mold chip... I tried to find on the thread but didn't come up with anything.