How did your chipping journey begin? (4 Viewers)

[SteveEH]

I found out the "clay" dice chips I bought were plastic with metal slugs. Obviously, that was unacceptable! Then I found chiptalk...

Edit: actually a long time ago the plastic Hoyle chips were common and I didn't like them. I bought a set of plastic top hat mold chips so I guess it began then...

 

[bigblind]

wanted better chips than dice chips for my sons bachelor party found out about Paulson Classic chips from CT
bought a large set of them, still have them, you always remember your first

 

[OfficerLovejoy]

Started with dice chips around the year 2000 after playing with a big glass of change for a few months.
When the poker boom started around 2004, I got into online poker and were clearing deposit bonus offers whenever possible.
One of them were a 500pc set of Nevada Jack skulls I cleared through a promotion on absolute poker.
I've been using these for 14 years in my monthly 5ct/10ct game with friends and colleagues. The denoms were used as cents, so go #teamblackdollar!

When the pandemic hit and our monthly game was on hold, I went looking for advice on new chips, preferably with actual denoms in dollars/euros.
I found Apachepoker and ordered a set of "the bank" China clays for ~$350 which seemed an insane amount of money for poker chips to me back then.
Whilst waiting for two months for the chips to arrive (COVID and USPS did not mix well back then) I found PCF.
Suddenly I realized that the breakdown I chose wasn't as clever as I thought.

I really liked the look and feel of the china clays, but I couldn't get over the smell.

Long story short, I just needed to know what all the rage with Paulson was all about.

I found @WhiteMamba1646 s flamingo set, was blown away and slowly started to build my own...
About a year later I finally finished the set and picked up a few other Paulson sets on the side as well.

Loved every step of the journey and regret nothing... Well maybe a few chips I sold again because I didn't know what to do with them at the time.

 

[borisasaurus]

Paulson's are my favorite, but I also have Chipco, Bud Jones CIC, TRK, and ASM (or Burt) Lg Greek Key

I'm just starting out and already looking to get at least a shuffle stack of each of these... no logic involved

 

[chrismurda]

Followed these radiant red beauties down the rabbit hole…

 

[Mojo1312]

My cousin started hosting NLHE in his basement in the fall of 2007 after being introduced to the game by his buddy who was home on leave from Iraq, We set the blinds at .25/.50. The buy-in was $20.

We had one player that loved to hoard the white quarter chips, as a result, quarters were continuously being introduced to the game whenever a player busted. I found it annoying, but my cousin allowed it.

This player would stack his chips five high along the rail. There were evenings where I would drag in barrels of quarters after busting him. Dice chips are fine in small quantities, but having lots of them to stack sucks.

I began looking for alternatives online and the rest is history.

 

[XBobdog]

I hosted a regular game with diamond plastic chips while at school in the late 90's

One vacation, I ended up spending a week in Palmas del Mar PR with a bunch of friends. We would go to the little casino every night, so I harvested a rack or two of ones to play poker at the house with. Those Bud Jones were so clearly superior, and cooler to what we were playing with previously, that I kept em.

Problem was, we only had one denomination. After a few weeks or months, I did some research and bought a set of WTHC and that was perfect for more than 10 years. I even, regretfully, returned the Palmas Del Mar chips to the casino the next year I was there.

Maybe 7-8 years ago I decided to build a nice case for my chips. Wanting it to be my "forever" case, I decided I needed a few more racks to complete my set. Since the WTHC were no longer produced for the home market, I was forced to eBay to fill the gaps in my set. I was in the the eBay classified rabbit hole for like a year trying to get those chips. I started buying chips I thought were deals or cool, that I didn't need. It was clear I had the fever then.

It was really finding this place and the Chip Room Horseshoe Cleveland Sale that really threw gasoline on the fire.

 

[Seeking Alpha Social Club]

It started with these....

....but is often fueled by this...

CHEERS and enjoy the journey!!

 

[borisasaurus]

It started with these....

View attachment 839248

Excuse my ignorance , but what type of chips are those? and I can’t even imagine how many chips would be showing up at my door if I hopped on PCF after cracking a bottle of Patron

keep the stories coming everyone- I’ve really been enjoying reading about all the different ways people have found this community.

 

[Seeking Alpha Social Club]

Excuse my ignorance , but what type of chips are those? and I can’t even imagine how many chips would be showing up at my door if I hopped on PCF after cracking a bottle of Patron

keep the stories coming everyone- I’ve really been enjoying reading about all the different ways people have found this community.

BCC Samurais. Designed by Elijah Muse during the CT days.

They were relatively affordable until a yesr ago, but are creeping up in price as people discover them. BY FAR, the best stacking chips I have, and I love the 2 different labels. I believe I was 400 chips high in the bottom pic.

And yes...patron makes you spend a bit more than you should...LOL!!

 

[borisasaurus]

BCC Samurais. Designed by Elijah Muse during the CT days.

They were relatively affordable until a yesr ago, but are creeping up in price as people discover them. BY FAR, the best stacking chips I have, and I love the 2 different labels. I believe I was 400 chips high in the bottom pic.

And yes...patron makes you spend a bit more than you should...LOL!!

View attachment 839362View attachment 839364View attachment 839365View attachment 839363

Now that's a chip stack lmao!! Sweet table you've got there too. I was asking because I was actually given one of those red 5s as an extra mystery chip in a recent package. I love the look & feel, and those purples are really catching my eye now...

 

[mistahclean]

I got started back in the CT days after wanting to upgrade from a set of dice chips from the local game my friends and I had. Got started with a set of the BC James Bonds and then cycled through a few different sets before winding up with a set of Matsui Blue Sands via a CT group buy and my "forever" set courtesy of a few CTers, a mixed Paulson set.

Kind of nostalgic thinking about it!

 

[Mojo1312]

I believe I was 400 chips high in the bottom pic.

View attachment 839363

I have trouble believing you after you told me this video is real.

 

[Seeking Alpha Social Club]

I have trouble believing you after you told me this video is real.

Is it not real...LOL!!

I was putting them on 20 at a time, and if remember correctly, made it to 440 and crashed and burned at 460. Luckily no casualties on the tile floor.

 

[NoNamePokerGuy]

I had slugged chips for almost 20 years, it was all that I could afford. However, I had seen samurai chips back when they were in production and had wanted them for a while, but alas life had other plans. Now, I've ben able to acquire a few sets/racks that have come on to the market, and every time I do it makes me want it more. Pretty sure soon I'll be offering unreasonable amounts of money for some 5$ samurai,

 

[Seeking Alpha Social Club]

I had slugged chips for almost 20 years, it was all that I could afford. However, I had seen samurai chips back when they were in production and had wanted them for a while, but alas life had other plans. Now, I've ben able to acquire a few sets/racks that have come on to the market, and every time I do it makes me want it more. Pretty sure soon I'll be offering unreasonable amounts of money for some 5$ samurai,

$5 and $1000 chips seem to be tough to get. Good luck!!

 

[NoNamePokerGuy]

$5 and $1000 chips seem to be tough to get. Good luck!!

Honestly trying to figure out what the true market value of those chips are these days. Everything else goes for ~2, is it 4? 5?$ I dunno

 

[LinkyBabe]

I was invited to a home poker tourney back in early 2009. It was my first time playing Texas Holdem and my first time since my teens in playing any kind of organized poker. I had no idea what I was doing... I folded out of turn or folded my big blind when no one raised. Now I make the same mistakes with nicer chips.

I wanted to get better at poker so I started watching any poker shows I could and one that I kept coming back to was NBC's Poker After Dark. I learned a lot but what really caught my eye were the chips they used. They were like dice chips but they sounded different and the colours were more vibrant:

The rest is history.

I finally completed my custom CPC set last year which is an homage to that show:

 

[navels]

One day my boss at GPI asked me if I could infiltrate a community of chip collectors and learn their wily ways.

 

[Pungence]

I first got into poker in 2004 during the boom. I was realizing there were certain types of chips I really liked and others I didn’t like so much. At the time, my options were limited, so I ended up with a Phil Hellmuth Jr and WPT set (pics in my intro thread). They got the job done, but I would have loved to have had something higher quality.

I played for the first time in a long time recently, and the thought crossed my mind that there are probably some better chip options out there. After doing some looking around, everything was pointing me to PCF. Now I’ve been spending the last week or two learning as much as I can and figuring out what I like and what I’d want in a collection. It’s cool hearing the story behind different sets too! Finding out that a set was saved from being destroyed by a casino, and now there’s only a certain amount available, it makes it that much more valuable for the owner!

 

[Pinkdan]

For me I was in college back in August 2005. I was playing home games as often as I could, and more or less enamored all around with poker. I’ve also been a collector and obsessive with hobbies all my life so this was no different. I instinctually bought a lot of chip samples and quickly found out what I liked. Long story short, while others were spending their money on booze and restaurant food I saved and saved to buy my very first top of the line poker set: the Paulson ‘05 CDI’s.

Sadly, I later had to sell them for $ reasons, but I loved them so damn much! I’ve been wishing I had them back ever since. Believe it or not I bought a 500 chip set from @Apache poker for $510 buckaroos, absolutely insane. Imagine if we had those prices today...

Here’s a pic of me feeling on top of the world with my new set.

 

[Josh Kifer]

Followed these radiant red beauties down the rabbit hole…

View attachment 839234

I remember those....

 

[Poker Zombie]

I wanted custom chips. I had never hosted a game, but found HomePokerTourney.com (now defunct) and figured out what I needed to host a game for 6-8 players.

Then my game grew. I needed more chips. The attempt to add-on was a miserable failure. The original blanks were no longer available, so I mixed in ceramics. It turns out not all chips are the same thickness - how little I knew.

So I needed a new set for the bigger group, and someone from HPT mentioned a "Group-buy" on Chiptalk. The rabbit hole opened.

The story I really want to hear about though, is @Ben8257 and @FordPickup92's

 

[FordPickup92]

I wanted custom chips. I had never hosted a game, but found HomePokerTourney.com (now defunct) and figured out what I needed to host a game for 6-8 players.

Then my game grew. I needed more chips. The attempt to add-on was a miserable failure. The original blanks were no longer available, so I mixed in ceramics. It turns out not all chips are the same thickness - how little I knew.

So I needed a new set for the bigger group, and someone from HPT mentioned a "Group-buy" on Chiptalk. The rabbit hole opened.

The story I really want to hear about though, is @Ben8257 and @FordPickup92's

Ben was surfing the webs to add more slugs to his first set, ended up getting those, and then ended up finding the slugged plastic casino royale chips in bulk from some guy. I think when searching around for those, Ben happened upon chiptalk. When the request to join was never answered he did some poking around and joined PCF, I joined about a week later. Can't remember what sparked the quest for more slugs initially, I think it may have been that he was starting to teach me how to play (I had never really played before) We also bought a bunch of monte carlo's (still have all the above)

We tried (and miserably failed) to pawn off some of the casino royale extras we didn't need here. A little while after that I found a cheap deal on OfferUp and purchased my first set (PCA primary) to which after posting here was informed that the seller was a scam and had also sold this set multiple times to members here without actually sending the chips. This is when I met @allforcharity since he was very open and helpful about his experience. After some panic and lots of drama with the seller, I did actually receive the chips. They were awesome, and I was hooked.
During this time I also bought Ben his first rack of Paulson's off eBay (Ace's casino $2s)

Ben had always loved poker and reminisced quite a bit about poker in the "old days" with family and at the Orioles nest.
Somewhere amongst all this we hosted one or two small time games with our monte carlos at the house, I really enjoyed playing and Ben was happy to be playing again. We were invited to our first "mini" meet up at Krafticus' and really enjoyed that as well
I can't recall if the first game we played at Mark's came before or after the meet up, but I do remember being incredibly nervous and a total loose cannon when I first started playing. My aggression really paid off, I had no reads on me in the group yet, and the combination lead to my first win at my first real game ever. I was really hooked now lol

Needless to say, we dove in deep head first. Ben has a huge collector's mentality, if it's collectable he probably has it. So getting back into the poker scene plus hoarding chips was a joy for him. I was just along for the ride at first, but really fell in love with the whole thing. This lead to my need to flex (LOL) I quickly began filling out my primary set until it was completely overboard and when I was no longer satisfied with those I went straight for the PCA secondaries. I got incredibly lucky (and my first real debt lol) with those. But I regret nothing.
Ben was working on hoarding up Ace's chips, and then Garden City. We stuck with mostly affordable stuff at first, minus the PCA adventure.
We met tons of great people as well, so the combination of poker, people, and chips has brought us alot of joy that will always be a part of our life. We've evolved a bit, selling some things, replacing some of our first sets with things we truly love and will never sell.
I sold a large chunk of my PCA primaries and morphed that into a T5 tourney set, keeping the secondaries as a cash set.

 

[FordPickup92]

Oh, and heres some old pics

 

[Taghkanic]

So, I took over a home game I’d played in for years.

The first host moved away. The second got divorced and lost his giant mancave in the deal. The third went bankrupt and had his house repossessed…

Who wouldn’t want to be the fourth host, right?

Anyway, when I agreed to take over the game, I was gifted a very nice custom poker table and two big cases of dirty dice chips.

Not being a casino player at the time, I went on Amazon and bought a bunch of new non-dice plastics in neat colors. Thought I was making a big upgrade.

A while later I played in a social hall tourney, and one of the players mentioned he had a “birdcage” of 1,000 “casino-grade” chips for sale, barely used. Went to see them, they were slugged 14g injection molds. Used those for a while but even my clueless non-chipping mind recognized they were no good. (The guy from the social hall actually bought them back, wow.)

Started watching some poker online, and noticed the nice clink of their chips being shuffled. Started to realize these were a different grade of chips.

Hunted around on eBay and eventually landed on a case of nearly 1,000 ASM H-mold solids. (I didn’t know those terms at the time.) It felt like a ridiculous splurge but I nabbed them.

In researching what my new (old) clay chips were, I found this forum.

Soon thereafter found a set of about 800 Paulson solids on eBay. Think I paid $900. Some wags here in the PCF Not Mine section said “someone overpaid.”

Then it was off to the races here.

 

[CrazyEddie]

Ben has a huge collector's mentality, if it's collectable he probably has it.

Gonna need some pictures here.

I once met someone (a friend-of-a-friend) who had a collection of Star Wars commemorative soda cans.

 

[FordPickup92]

Gonna need some pictures here.

I once met someone (a friend-of-a-friend) who had a collection of Star Wars commemorative soda cans.

Mostly legos, old coins and paper bills, archery targets, hunting equipment and clothing, decoys, chainsaws, liquor, guns, knives

Odds and ends lol

 

[Ben8257]

Mostly legos, old coins and paper bills, archery targets, hunting equipment and clothing, decoys, chainsaws, liquor, guns, knives

Odds and ends lol

Don't you dare forget a 600 + collection of 1980s Hasbro Battle Beasts, Army Ants, Momsters in My Pocket, over 10k linclon logs, $20k in DJ equipment I don't use, probably $100k in tools I never touch, ammo I never shoot!

I had issues Longgg before we joined this hobby!

 

[WinterPoker]

Started playing poker with my friends at college, so I bought a cheap set of dice chips. Am now getting tired of the tacky chips and everyone forgetting how much the chips are worth. Hoping to find my first ‘real’ set soon!