Chip Naming / Identification Standards? (4 Viewers)

[Gus]

I'm newer here, so maybe I've missed it, but is there a standard naming convention for chips that is broadly accepted?

I'm interested in developing this if it doesn't exist yet. If there's a good reason it doesn't exist, help me understand why. There are probably good reasons if it's not a thing!

The two big standards appear to be the ChipGuide list, and Eisenstadt's / "Antique Gambling Chips" list. CG is full of weird duplicates and shallow descriptions (official names that while perhaps widely known are completely indecipherable to newcomers), and Eisenstadt's is fairly comprehensive but incomplete. Are old collectors/valuation catalogs standardized in their ID?

ChipGuide Names:
https://chipguide.themogh.org/cg_mold_guide.php

Eisenstadt's Names:
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/molddesignindex_site.htm

I'm putting together a website and the big first goal is to nail down chip identification, one chip at a time.

1. Visual description of mold (if compression trad clay this is fairly straightforward, harder for Casino plastic)
2. Brief history of the mold: original creator / IP owner, manufacturer (if different), later iterations, knock-offs, etc
3. Any fun facts about said mold (e.g. Nevada's Borland saga)
4. For a given chip, its rough date of manufacture, colors, description (denomination, casino, hotstamp vs inlay, etc)

Curious what people think overall, and what I'm missing as a newbie (IT IS THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK, ATTEMPT NOT OR TEMPT MADNESS!).

 

[allforcharity]

They are 'standard' in that someone, maybe the first someone, tried to make a comprehensive catalogue of known molds and assign an ID to them. But they were done quite haphazardly, trying to organize in rough groups based on text and graphic elements, as opposed to manufacturer, time, material, etc.

 

[BGinGA]

Many/most/nearly all of the assigned names in the ChipGuide list are simply inaccurate or totally fabricated. I don't think anybody uses that list, including those folks who post chip pics on ChipGuide. It's mostly just total BS, with no factual foundation that is based on the actual terminology used by the manufacturers, distributors, or resellers.

Many/most in the Eisenstadt list are commonly used in both the singles and sets collector worlds, although it contains errors as well.

I think what you are wanting to do (id #1-#4) is indeed an impossible task, especially if wanting to include all plastics from all manufacturers. Many of those only have internal pattern numbers or names that are not available or known to the general public.

 

[Gus]

Many/most/nearly all of the assigned names in the ChipGuide list are simply inaccurate or totally fabricated. I don't think anybody uses that list, including those folks who post chip pics on ChipGuide. It's mostly just total BS, with no factual foundation that is based on the actual terminology used by the manufacturers, distributors, or resellers.

Many/most in the Eisenstadt list are commonly used in both the singles and sets collector worlds, although it contains errors as well.

I think what you are wanting to do (id #1-#4) is indeed an impossible task, especially if wanting to include all plastics from all manufacturers. Many of those only have internal pattern numbers or names that are not available or known to the general public.

Frankly I'm less interested in classifying casino plastics. With Matsui, Abbiati, and Bud Jones in hand I can hardly tell them apart.

My strongest interest is current-production molds, especially trad clay, tracing the history of the molds and even obtaining the same mold from different manufacturers in different materials. With a custom set of Circle Squares on the way I'm curious to dig into whether this was an original Burt Co mold, or what.

Also I'm tickled by knock-offs, both old and new. Like, TINA THC's (I think there was a run of those, maybe I'm mistaken) are just weirdly funny. Whereas the Web Mold TINA samples I got I figured were somewhat original until I found Web Mold trad clays and wanted to learn about the back story.

PCF archives have been remarkably helpful if I'm willing to sift through comments for 15 minutes on a given search. My goal is basically to surface that info (random comments, links to primary sources, and folks here who are themselves primary sources!), and stick it on a web page where it can be the definitive helpful source.

Maybe naming conventions aren't really the right place to start.

 

[BGinGA]

I'd start with a list of clay and ceramic molds, and work from there -- along with a list of data points you hope to identify for each one.

 

[chippitydoodah]

In my opinion, the best thing that could happen is if someone were to take the existing information in The Chip Guide and go through it one by one correcting errors, adding missing chips etc. Starting from scratch is a massive undertaking and most likely will lead to the same inaccuracies as are in all the other data sites.

 

[Gus]

In my opinion, the best thing that could happen is if someone were to take the existing information in The Chip Guide and go through it one by one correcting errors, adding missing chips etc. Starting from scratch is a massive undertaking and most likely will lead to the same inaccuracies as are in all the other data sites.

Chip Guide's ~400 names in my opinion focus too much on tiny details. Which perhaps that's just being accurate, so that's valid.

But they completely miss the "manufactured by" aspect of a chip. So they've got "Suits" as a generic name for about 6 different listed chips, but it doesn't specify compression molded, die slugs, casino plastic, consumer plastic, etc...

Part of the bigger goal in what I'm thinking about is to help differentiate casino grade (whether current harvested chips or vintage stuff) from consumer grade in a tangible, clear way. Like hey, those SlowPlays on Amazon... they're actually a lot like Chipco or current BRPro ceramics. Here's the similarities, here's the differences... Just because they rebranded "metal slug" to "IRON CORE" doesn't mean it's not just a die slugged chip. Which is OK, no moral judgement being passed on inexpensive chips and their attendant manufacturing processes.

So it's naming, manufacturing type, chip composition, history in the case of vintage chips, etc. And it's all bumping up against nearly every storefront listing every chip they sell as "CASINO GRADE CLAY" when it's just clearly deceptive and bleh.

Looking forward to "Tour of metal slugged chips" and how some are ABS, others are a different composite, etc.

Also like, the history of Dunes chips, from Borland making a mold / owning a mold, which I presume was a nod to the "Sands" casino? Maybe not, maybe generic desert vibes. But then it gets turned eventually into ceramics and today totally knocked off in TINAs. And a round of plastic ones there somewhere. It's a fun story! It tells a bit of history of home-market chips. Would love to have 1 (or a barrel) of each of these iterations to trace it thru and show how it's changed. But naming-wise, these are all just "DUNES."

 

[allforcharity]

In my opinion, the best thing that could happen is if someone were to take the existing information in The Chip Guide and go through it one by one correcting errors, adding missing chips etc. Starting from scratch is a massive undertaking and most likely will lead to the same inaccuracies as are in all the other data sites.

HAH!

I'd do it if I was paid the same hourly rate as I make now and continually adjusted for inflation. Should set me up for the next 15 years, eh?

 

[Gus]

HAH!

I'd do it if I was paid the same hourly rate as I make now and continually adjusted for inflation. Should set me up for the next 15 years, eh?

The thing is, for any given chip this can be done in about 15 minutes of tooting around on PCF

Or perhaps this is true for 90% of chips, then the other 10% are just wacky one-off’s or relabeled or otherwise strange

perhaps the right approach is a decision tree, or just a better filtering mechanism. Maybe an AI can be trained on the entire chip guide archive and then scrape eBay regularly and other collections to have the uber archive. Pondering… pondering…

 

[allforcharity]

The thing is, for any given chip this can be done in about 15 minutes of tooting around on PCF

Or perhaps this is true for 90% of chips, then the other 10% are just wacky one-off’s or relabeled or otherwise strange

perhaps the right approach is a decision tree, or just a better filtering mechanism. Maybe an AI can be trained on the entire chip guide archive and then scrape eBay regularly and other collections to have the uber archive. Pondering… pondering…

The database is huge. Multiple chips per casino over time, some of which span 70+ years of operation, plus manufacturers and changes of same, spot pattern nomenclature, colour inaccuracies (and figuring out what was even available at the time). AI won't give you anything, because garbage in = garbage out.

 

[chippitydoodah]

HAH!

I'd do it if I was paid the same hourly rate as I make now and continually adjusted for inflation. Should set me up for the next 15 years, eh?

So much for your username

 

[allforcharity]

So much for your username

I'm changing it to "allforprofit"

 

[Gus]

The database is huge. Multiple chips per casino over time, some of which span 70+ years of operation, plus manufacturers and changes of same, spot pattern nomenclature, colour inaccuracies (and figuring out what was even available at the time). AI won't give you anything, because garbage in = garbage out.

The biggest challenge there is tying a chip to a casino at a given time... which I actually don't particularly care about. Vitally important for collectors wanting total accuracy of a chip's provenance, but my simpler aim is to identify what the chip is, regardless of its casino name or other connection.

So for a given chip, it's like "Ah, that's an H-Mold... if it's newer it's CPC, older probably ASM. Really old maybe Burt (if Burt was making the H-mold... haven't looked into that yet). Which is different from "That's a 1963 H-Mold from Casino X."

The former is focused on what the chip is, the latter on casino history. Extending the analogy to baseball cards, I'm interested in "who printed that card, and what kind of card stock is it in?" and not "That's a 1987 Player X rare edition."

I picked up a barrel of these recently mostly because I needed a Small Key mold for the growing collection, but also because per the Spinetti's website it's a 1978 chip, uncirculated due to a printing error. I presume Burt made it given its extreme similarity in color to their white, along with what appears to be brass flakes for weight, but I haven't actually dug into the specifics. I don't care a hoot about the history of the Sierra Casino in Reno, NV, but I'm happy to have chips that they messed up at $1 each!
https://spinettisgaming.com/products/sahara-reno-1-chip

 

[BGinGA]

In 1978, your clay chip manufacturing choices were Burt Co., TR King, and Paulson. The small Greek Key mold resided at Burt Co.

 

[allforcharity]

Didn't a few thousand of these chips get sold here a few years ago?

 

[Gus]

Didn't a few thousand of these chips get sold here a few years ago?

There was an ad or promo from Spinetti's on here somewhere from a few years ago which is how I found them while researching the Small Key. I think they were selling them at $0.70ea for a black friday promo or something. They've still got'em, doesn't say on their site how many.

 

[Gus]

In 1978, your clay chip manufacturing choices were Burt Co., TR King, and Paulson. The small Greek Key mold resided at Burt Co.

These are facts I do not know! But wish to. I'm largely hung up on the mix of distributors, mold IP owners, and manufacturers, which all seem to overlap in confusing ways.

Is there a singular credible source for the history of chip manufacturers in the space? I know CPC's got a good write up on their history, but even that leaves out tons of relevant details about people involved that were pivotal (and/or went on to start different companies in the industry)