Interest exploring UK group buy of custom TINA chips (1 Viewer)

[fishandchips]

Now my 30days probation is up I can explore a UK group buy. I don't have my design ready yet, so have some time to think about how to buy them.

My baseline option is to join one of Justins monthly group buys, and get air delivery to UK for $130 (500 chips). And pay the taxes on the lot. That's easy.

For a group buy to be worthwile we need to take advantage of some of the following:

• Good per chip rate based on total quantity
• Cheap boat delivery to UK (which might not interest anyone).
• Shared mold cost
• Shared label cost
• Shared design cost

Anyone got an idea of typical UK delivery cost for eg 40kg (4000 chips) by boat ?

If everyone wants something different then it might all be too much work, but this thread could also be a place for people to pair or triple up for quick shared buys.

I'm currently planning to get Greek or Web mold Hybrids with custom (personal) chip print and labels. So I know I'll be paying the label setup cost myself unless I change to a more generic theme that someone else wants to share. If I keep winning at my home game money might not be a consideration and I'll just order my 500 when I'm ready

I want to work out the costings anyway, and it should be useful for the next UKer who wants to get some TINAs.

 

[mattross1313]

@Nymor I think is looking to tag onto a UK order from Tina, but only a small add-on I believe.

 

[Dbxela]

I'm considering an order, they'd be custom web mold.

 

[sweetpotatofishing]

I would be interested. I am designing my own (probably only 500 chips), but I imagine sharing the delivery cost would be beneficial at least?

I wouldn't actually mind going for something more generic, but I suppose that only works if we want to go for a similar setup.

 

[fishandchips]

I haven't been in contact about pricing, because I have a pretty good feel from the many other buys. But if this particular advert for no-mold hybrids reflects their general price breaks, it means that 1000 chips gets you the big discount. And not so much to gain from going bigger.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Sublimation-hybrid-ceramic-poker-chip-with_62060136328.html?

That's good news because it only needs 2 or 3 people with similar needs to get together. I can see this thread becoming a place to match people up to put in frequent 1000-2000 chip orders.

 

[fishandchips]

Thinking about more generic designs ( I do like The Nuts, and Wonky Donkey) I had an idea about a British icons chip set.

I started a thread in the mockups section. https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/uk-british-chip-set.128795/
Feel free to join in with it, if you think it's worth exploring.

I'm thinking it could become a group design that can evolve and add more chips, and people can customise it with their own wording and denominations.

 

[carbsta]

I'd be interested in getting Tinas in the UK. Although I would like to get my hands on some sample web mold / greek mold / sun mold 39mm hybrids to get an idea for if it's worth pulling the trigger. Seems tricky to get those samples in the UK.
I've only recently fallen down this rabbit hole, spending a while reading this forum and finally registered an account after finding this thread.

 

[fishandchips]

I'd be interested in getting Tinas in the UK. Although I would like to get my hands on some sample web mold / greek mold / sun mold 39mm hybrids to get an idea for if it's worth pulling the trigger. Seems tricky to get those samples in the UK.
I've only recently fallen down this rabbit hole, spending a while reading this forum and finally registered an account after finding this thread.

I'm hoping to get my hands on some samples too.

I'm still working on my design, but once it's done I'm sure I'll be keen to get an order in asap. I'll probably get 1000 chips because I'm going for 8 chip designs now (the 8 Defender sprites). I could just do the 6 enemies because that's more than enough denominations for my dual cash/tourney set, but if I'm doing 800 chips, what's another 200!

 

[carbsta]

I'm hoping to get my hands on some samples too.

I'm still working on my design, but once it's done I'm sure I'll be keen to get an order in asap. I'll probably get 1000 chips because I'm going for 8 chip designs now (the 8 Defender sprites). I could just do the 6 enemies because that's more than enough denominations for my dual cash/tourney set, but if I'm doing 800 chips, what's another 200!

What tools are you using for your design?
As I understand it @justincarothers takes two Adobe Illustrator files, one for chip spots and one for labels. But are there any examples (e.g from public designs) that I could take a look at to get dimensions etc?

 

[fishandchips]

Have a look for the Aces file aces_ceramic_chip_art.ai

I can't remember where but it's on the site somewhere. It contains lots of example chips in the required format.

I will be using Illustrator to design the chips, I've just created my sprites in it.

 

[fishandchips]

Anyone else nearly ready to order ?

My design is nearly complete in Illustrator, just a few final decisions to make.

Ideally I would like to keeps things simple and consolidate with another (or 2) Custom HYBRID WEBmold chipsets.

I'm deciding between 700 and 1000 chips for my set, it would be nice to get up over 1000 or even over 2000 chips. Typically boat delivery price doesn't change much with weight. I will be asking for prices and timescales this week.

If anyone needs help getting started or pulling a design together into an Illustrator design file, I might have time to help a bit (if it gets me a group buy partner!). I'm not offering to design chips, but I am proficient in illustrator and can put the production file together. I have tidied up some of the resources I found to make them usable (as they were full of junk and unstructured, OK I get that they have probably been imported to Illustrator from something else). Someone kindly gave me a web mould transparency so I can preview that too, see my mockup thread. If you wanted something dead simple like my chips colours with Dave's Poker Room in a standard font and a graphic on the label, I suppose I could knock that up, but I'm not going round and round in design iterations with you [unless you pay me ].

 

[fishandchips]

I got some pricing info from Tina.

Bad news is that there is no cheap freight option being offered to UK, only AIR. According to Tina boat is expensive for small loads, and train is not possible because gambling goods can be seized. On the plus side that means you should get your chips pretty quick.

It works out that up to about 700 chips, it's cheaper to go with Justin group buy and get the chips freighted by AIR direct to you.

But for 800 chips it's cheaper (and probably quicker) to go direct. I didn't ask when I could get my 1000 chips by if ordered this week.
Cost works out to be:

• £640 including assumed full taxes etc for 800 hybrid molded chips (80p each).
• £690 for 1000 (69p each) (good value due to price break)

A UK group buy (eg few people getting together) could work out like this:

• 2 people getting together to order 600 chips each, works out to 67p each.
• 3 people getting together to order 600 chips each, works out to 57p each.

I can send you my spreadsheets if you request them.

For my order of 1000 I can still save myself £90 (£600 vs £690) if someone comes in with me for just 400 chips ( at 64p a chip to them inc UK on shipping). So speak up!

The saving is from the shared freight cost and shared "logo charge".

The Logo charge I was quoted was always $158 and didn't change with order size (but I'm pretty sure it would go up if eg you only averaged 25 or 50 of each chip design). The quotes I got were for 800 chips with 8 designs, 1000 chips with 8 designs, and 1800 chips with 16 designs.

 

[Dbxela]

Thanks for this, it'd be great to see the sheet, could you make it a google doc?

TBH its come in a little higher than I hoped. I have in mind 3 designs if I go for 600 and 4 if I go bigger, IDK how that affects logo charge.

I was originally considering 800-1000, but seeing the pricing 600x with 3 people could be a good fit.

 

[fishandchips]

Thanks for this, it'd be great to see the sheet, could you make it a google doc?

TBH its come in a little higher than I hoped. I have in mind 3 designs if I go for 600 and 4 if I go bigger, IDK how that affects logo charge.

I was originally considering 800-1000, but seeing the pricing 600x with 3 people could be a good fit.

I've DMd you a link to my excel spreadsheet.

I'm sure (99%) that as you are well over 100 chips per design, it won't matter ( ie won't get charged more).

I might drop my quantity to 800 or 900, but if you are 600+ , that's still 1400+ which gets us a good reduction vs 600 direct or 600 via Justin.

 

[carbsta]

Thanks for the info on chip and shipping prices!

I had some samples arrive yesterday which has boosted my confidence in going for hybrid Tina web molds too, the matte finish is really great compared to other ceramics I've tried. I was on the fence about going for sunfly polyinno instead, but I am less keen about their glossy edges having seen them in person now. My only concern is they are still quite slippery and plastic but I think that's worth it on the price compared to going all out on CPC.

I'll have a look at your mockup thread, although I wouldn't say I'm "nearly ready" as I'm only just getting started on design, and that's something I do want to put some time and thought into as I'm hoping to make a nice set of custom chips for board gaming.
I also need to think about bank size, as I was originally looking at around the 300-400 chip count.

 

[Dbxela]

Regarding the design assets, which you said you may be able to help with a little (I understand, not too much! ). I'm not sure how close I actually am in practice. I don't have an adobe license.

I do have a design I put together in figma, for the chip I took simple screen clips of the Rounders R3-6 because I assumed I'd be working with Justin and just able to ask for e.g. R4+logo. The inner is simple rounders tribute so I have assets for a logo and amount font.

Would you be able to point me in the right direction to get proper assets together? I'm happy to try to figure out new tools myself, but I only know figma enough to work nearby designers, it's not my usual area .

 

[fishandchips]

Regarding the design assets, which you said you may be able to help with a little (I understand, not too much! ). I'm not sure how close I actually am in practice. I don't have an adobe license.

I do have a design I put together in figma, for the chip I took simple screen clips of the Rounders R3-6 because I assumed I'd be working with Justin and just able to ask for e.g. R4+logo. The inner is simple rounders tribute so I have assets for a logo and amount font.

Would you be able to point me in the right direction to get proper assets together? I'm happy to try to figure out new tools myself, but I only know figma enough to work nearby designers, it's not my usual area .

If you cut and paste something together that shows the chip colours/spots that you want, I can produce those in illustrator. Rounders looks about as simple as it gets. And send me your label assets and I can add those (probably, I try to only work with vectors, if they are raster images then I can probably work out how to use them )

 

[Dbxela]

Ok, thanks, lets try this:

It looks like I cannot share vector format exports on this forum, here's a link to a figma if that helps
https://www.figma.com/design/3APD7x...-chips-final?node-id=0-1&t=51vmCkkIn3PEMLnP-1

They would be on the web mold, this is just the only template I found.

 

[fishandchips]

I've DMd you my email so you can send vectors or what you have.

This is what I will aim for, but on a web mould.

Ps. Have you though about £20 instead of £25 (that's the standard question every single time someone puts a £25 on a small stakes set)

Also, I might be tempted to go 4 spots, 1 spot, 5 spots, ?spots. Because I'd be struggling to tie the spots to the numbers!

 

[Dbxela]

I had £20 drafted in there earlier . Mainly just because I do like standard colours and didn't want to write £25 on a yellow. I think I'll keep the lower 3 patterns so that our table looks like this!...

But I went with £25 because I find stacks of £400 odd (not that we'll ever be that deep!). I currently use a £25 plaque, we don't use cash, and we buy in for £25 or £50 total usually

 

[fishandchips]

Hey UK chippers.

I'm slowing down a bit on my purchase. So I'm not ready to order web mold at this point.

My design is very simple with a big bold graphic on the label so I'd really like the label colours to match the chip. Seems impossible to do in one shot with hybrid, especially with a new printer thrown into the mix. So am now considering going for one of the full face printing options.

 

[sweetpotatofishing]

Is this is a new issue, then? As in, colour matching between label and the chip? My design also relied on consistent colours.

 

[fishandchips]

Is this is a new issue, then? As in, colour matching between label and the chip? My design also relied on consistent colours.

check out cratty's tangiers thread. https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/tangiers-and-the-quest-for-a-tina-hybrid-faux-inlay.123415/

At the end cratty says he will share his crosslink of matching values. When he's got the samples from the new printer. Not sure if he plans to do it for just the colors of the tangiers labels or if he will give further advice for all the sample wheel colours.

 

[Dbxela]

Now we know how the pricing works, that shipping is such a chunky, almost fixed proportion, I'll probably just hold off too and see if we can get a group together later.