My apologies. I accept that critque, and apologize for my ignorance. I should have been more careful with my wording. I didn't mean to appear disrespectful, I meant more in terms of asking for education. What makes these so desirable? I'm trying to educate myself on the different levels and qualities of chips, so that when I decide to fork out the money, I know what I'm getting, and what I'm looking for.
I appreciate and respect the forum here, and again, I apologize.
No worries whatsoever Brad... I totally understand...
Okay, answering your question is almost impossible but I'll try my best to give you my perspective in a few words...
Just like with almost everything else, chip pricing is a matter of supply and demand. On the supply side, it's been around two years since there is absolutely no official, off the shelve offer for new clay chips at all for the home market. Even before Paulson decided to pull out of the home market with their 'retail' molds, they had already pulled out of the home market with their casino mold,
THC. In addition to that, other manufacturers that were supplying the home market (and casinos) with clay chips,
BCC and
TRK, had closed their door completely. On the custom chip side, for a period of about 2 years, ASM, the only game in town at that point, had very bad management and some people were a bit skeptic of ordering from them. It's been just about 2 years since a couple of outstanding guys acquired ASM's assets and started putting out great custom chips as
CPC, Classic Poker Chips. Regarding used and new casino Paulson (like those Grand Victorias) we always had only one reliable source, TheChipRoom. During the past couple of years though, it seems it's been harder from TCR to obtain new allotments from casino so that avenue has been strangled as well. In summary, supply in general has been really, really short.
On the demand side, there seems to be a little recovery from the home market after the downswing coming from online poker, after Black Friday. Now, what makes a particular chips more desirable than others is a function of too many things to list but here are some: quality, durability, condition, design of the chips, scarcity, name of casino, availability of other chips denoms for a complete set, and the list go on and on... And each one of those is basically a personal preference that at the end of the day forms the total demand for a particular chip...
Hope it helps a least a little bit... Sorry for the long winded response and for some necessary simplifications...
Again, welcome to the forum man!
