FDLmold: Rat Rod mixed .25/.25 and up leaded THC poker set (2 Viewers)

[FDLmold]

Have you ever looked at a casino chip and wondered, like in Toy Story 3, "When was the last time somebody used you to gamble with, little buddy?"
Have you ever wondered how you could afford leaded Paulsons in the current chip market?
Have you ever been frustrated when other people now want singles of the chip you've slowly been acquiring?

This is a rat rod.

It doesn't look like much. It's put together from whatever scraps the owner can cobble together. But it works. And some rat rods work REALLY well.

This is my Rat Rod poker set. Conceived as an intellectual exercise, and put together as a test of a unique (to the best of my knowledge) idea. A whole set of singles, united only by their lead content and their chip mold. Cobbled together with a multitude of transactions, but as functional and pretty as any homogenous set of chips from a single location.

I could write a dissertation about the knowledge I've acquired and stories and experiences I've stumbled across over the past 12 months as I've put this together. But for now, I'll just leave you with a few statistics so far up to these photos:

Transactions: 90
Chips: 796
Unique chips: 421
Average cost per chip: $6.122
Average mass of a chip: 10.430 grams

When was the last time some of these all-time beauties were used to gamble? I'd say decades. Let them play!

 

[Ben8257]

Love the Idea! Kind of similar to my mixed Trump AC set, lots if limited edition chips to keep you entertained while playing poker. Chips are artwork, while a set of matching chips is beautiful... how much cooler is it that everytime you look down you can check out something different! That's real art!!

Genius and Congratulations good Sir!!

 

[Sprouty]

Have you ever looked at a casino chip and wondered, like in Toy Story 3, "When was the last time somebody used you to gamble with, little buddy?"
Have you ever wondered how you could afford leaded Paulsons in the current chip market?
Have you ever been frustrated when other people now want singles of the chip you've slowly been acquiring?

This is a rat rod.
View attachment 868745
It doesn't look like much. It's put together from whatever scraps the owner can cobble together. But it works. And some rat rods work REALLY well.

This is my Rat Rod poker set. Conceived as an intellectual exercise, and put together as a test of a unique (to the best of my knowledge) idea. A whole set of singles, united only by their lead content and their chip mold. Cobbled together with a multitude of transactions, but as functional and pretty as any homogenous set of chips from a single location.

View attachment 868754View attachment 868755View attachment 868757View attachment 868758View attachment 868759View attachment 868760View attachment 868762

I could write a dissertation about the knowledge I've acquired and stories and experiences I've stumbled across over the past 12 months as I've put this together. But for now, I'll just leave you with a few statistics so far up to these photos:

Transactions: 90
Chips: 796
Unique chips: 421
Average cost per chip: $6.122
Average mass of a chip: 10.430 grams

When was the last time some of these all-time beauties were used to gamble? I'd say decades. Let them play!

View attachment 868769

I can't help but notice that awesome Sundowner five in there!

Awesome concept!

 

[Markincolo]

This is an awesome idea. Especially considering I've just started collecting.

 

[leo822]

So well done! Would love to play your next home game.

 

[Grandmasturkey]

This is so cool. Love giving these chips the airtime they deserve

 

[FDLmold]

I can't help but notice that awesome Sundowner five in there!

Awesome concept!

Thanks! There are 184 unique $5 chips so far. All red, spotted, leaded, and THC. The variety is meant to distract my opponents. Here's a splash pot of the 20 five dollar chips that were in the Sundowner barrel:

 

[Ben8257]

Thanks! There are 184 unique $5 chips so far. All red, spotted, leaded, and THC. The variety is meant to distract my opponents. Here's a splash pot of the 20 five dollar chips that were in the Sundowner barrel:

View attachment 868785

Reminds me of this!

Really get under that OCD skin! Haha

 

[upNdown]

This is so crazy, it just might work!

 

[FDLmold]

Exactly! I have too many tasks this evening, but I'll litter the thread with splash pot pr0n, new acquisitions, and stories and knowledge when I have more time.

 

[timinater]

Love it!

 

[BirdCage]

+1 vote for Best Custom Set of 2022 (Open Class)

+1 vote for 2023 PCF calendar

This set is educational, historical, and it doesn't require anyone to agree upon best design for each denomination. Would love to see it in action.

Plus mixed 25¢ & mixed 50¢ chips - fracolicious!

Truly taking OCD set-building to another level.

 

[FDLmold]

$235 splash pot with too many fracs in it to be realistic but who cares.

 

[mike32]

Very cool idea! By the stats it was not inexpensive but a labor of love.

 

[Machine]

Fantastic!

 

[Lee4711]

Awesome idea, congratulations sir! At first thought I wouldn’t think something like this could work but you certainly did. Love the stats part at the end, very interesting indeed.

 

[FDLmold]

Awesome idea, congratulations sir! At first thought I wouldn’t think something like this could work but you certainly did. Love the stats part at the end, very interesting indeed.

There are plenty more stats where that came from, especially when it's broken down by denomination.

 

[Lee4711]

There are plenty more stats where that came from, especially when it's broken down by denomination.

That’s awesome, feel free to share!
Are you still in the process of building it? Or is it done….or will it never be done and be an ongoing project?

 

[FDLmold]

That’s awesome, feel free to share!
Are you still in the process of building it? Or is it done….or will it never be done and be an ongoing project?

I'll share. Eventually. I didn't want to deluge people into boredom. As I get time and inspiration, I'll discuss color choices and ideas and reveal more stats. For instance, there are a few expensive singles in the $5 and $25 denoms that are never in anybody's poker set, ever. I thought a few nuggets like that sprinkled into the set would be a nice treat, but they do throw off my per-chip numbers significantly. If you remove the eight most expensive chips from the set, the per-chip for the whole set drops by almost 70 cents per chip.

It's a permanently ongoing project. The beauty of it is there is ALWAYS going to be action. I got bored with my NV and CA frac singles collection because there were so few transactions. Now those chips are going to better homes and will help fund this project some more. There are still many cheap unique singles not in this set that easily could be.

 

[FDLmold]

What was the first thing I did? I picked colors. But you can't just pick any colors. The chips have to exist and be obtainable at a price you find palatable. I'm pretty sure my first choice was to acquire BLUE ones. White is boring. So how do you find all the blue ones that are out there? The chipguide at themogh has a great search feature. My favorite searches are for SCV and LCV mold chips (which are both THC) in certain colors and by region. Here's a search for blue SCV chips in the Caribbean.

There are 41. Not bad! They're not all $1 chips, but there are a bunch. Between the Caribbean, California, and Nevada, I found there were plenty of cheap blue leaded THC $1 chips to pursue this project. The frac chips are less plentiful, so there has been A LOT of duplication in the 25cent and 50cent denominations. Some colors are more common, like red 25-cent chips. And some are so rare you would never choose them, like BLACK fractional THC chips, which barely exist at all, or any color except GREEN for the $25 chips.

25 cent: I did PINK, but YELLOW and RED are also do-able
50 cent: I did YELLOW, but PINK could be done as well
$1: I chose BLUE, but WHITE can be done easily
$5: I chose RED. YELLOW is the only other choice, but is limited to California and Montana and would get expensive fast
$25: GREEN is it here

 

[FDLmold]

One of my obsessions with this set is that I have measured the mass of every chip and documented it. There’s so much information in those masses once you’ve acquired hundreds of them.

For instance, I am in LOVE with this chip. I got another duplicate in the mail this week.

Over 11 grams is HUMONGOUS for an inlaid chip. This isn’t my heaviest inlaid chip. But it’s up there.

 

[Kain8]

Great concept and kudos for pulling it off!

Still though, reminds me of:

 

[FDLmold]

Great concept and kudos for pulling it off!

Still though, reminds me of:

View attachment 873044

Agreed. No way is this set to everybody's tastes. But, I guarantee that anybody in this forum who sits down to play cards with this set will be playing poker with at least dozens of chips they've never played cards with before, or even seen in person before. Which is the whole point of why I am curating this set!

 

[WedgeRock]

anybody in this forum who sits down to play cards with this set will be playing poker with at least dozens of chips they've never played cards with before, or even seen in person before.

You, sir, are a visionary.

 

[FDLmold]

You, sir, are a visionary.

Those are oh so very kind words. Thanks!

 

[FDLmold]

So as I've mentioned, I record the mass of each chip as I put it into the set. I may as well start small, so these are the masses of all the pink 25-cent chips.

9.38	10.00	10.65	11.43	12.00
9.71	10.00	10.65	11.45	12.00
9.77	10.05	10.66	11.47	12.00
9.77	10.21	10.67	11.53	12.00
9.80	10.39	10.68	11.56	12.00
9.82	10.45	10.68	11.57	12.00
9.84	10.49	10.68	11.58	12.00
9.86	10.50	10.69	11.58	12.00
9.86	10.51	10.71	11.60	12.03
9.87	10.51	10.72	11.60	12.07
9.89	10.54	10.73	11.61	12.07
9.89	10.54	10.74	11.63	12.09
9.89	10.55	10.75	11.66	12.10
9.90	10.55	10.76	11.72	12.11
9.90	10.56	10.77	11.73	12.15
9.90	10.59	10.81	11.74
9.92	10.60	10.81	11.74
9.92	10.60	10.83	11.76
9.93	10.60	10.85	11.94
9.94	10.63	10.86	11.95
	10.63	10.87	11.95
	10.63	10.94
	10.64

Meh, that's just a list of numbers. Let's make a histogram, with a bin width of 0.10.

Whoa! Now there is an interesting thing. All I own are pink and hot pink chips (I think). It's clear from this that if I had more data, bell curves would form at certain mean values, with a distribution about those means. I see four formulations here, and with more time and effort I could find the chips that belong to these groups and make more specific conclusions, such as color, or age of chips, and how those affected the gram masses that Paulson was targeting for their hot stamped chips in these colors.

 

[FDLmold]

Because I'm posting this pic in every post I follow I suppose:

17 chips added to The Rat Rod Set today. The only new one, however, is Famous Bonanza. But he fits awesomely with the other Colorado chips I have in the set.

 

[ChipFinderSK]

Chips: 796
Unique chips: 421

Love the idea and execution, but you can’t stop now…I’m guessing the majority of the duplicates are in the fracs? Are there enough unique fracs out there where you can make the entire set consist of unique chips?

 

[FDLmold]

Love the idea and execution, but you can’t stop now…I’m guessing the majority of the duplicates are in the fracs? Are there enough unique fracs out there where you can make the entire set consist of unique chips?

The fracs, both denoms, are impossible to make a rack from using only unique chips. There are not 100 unique pink 25c chips or yellow 50c obtainable chips out there. For example, I have 102 quarters, but only 22 are unique, and there are eight or less obtainable unique chips still out there. If money was no object, maybe 35 uniques could be found.

 

[ChipFinderSK]

The fracs, both denoms, are impossible to make a rack from using only unique chips. There are not 100 unique pink 25c chips or yellow 50c obtainable chips out there. For example, I have 102 quarters, but only 22 are unique, and there are eight or less obtainable unique chips still out there. If money was no object, maybe 35 uniques could be found.

4 quarters each of 25 different chips? Not sure what would make the most sense with the 50c.