Native Lights Casino Primary Chip Sale (6 Viewers)

[crussader]

For what it's worth, here is what I would do.

Announce the sale with a deadline date, price list, and percentage limitations on quantities. Up until the deadline, accept orders by email with total quantity of chips ordered listed in the message title. After the deadline go through the orders beginning with the highest quantities first and do a trial allocation on each order until running out of chips (rejecting invalid orders along the way). After the available chips have been allocated to the orders, make an assessment as to whether the results represent a fair and reasonable distribution of chips. If the distribution doesn't pass the assessment, make adjustments using whatever privately determined criteria seems best. Send out invoices.

 

[Chipnut]

For what it's worth, here is what I would do.

Announce the sale with a deadline date, price list, and percentage limitations on quantities. Up until the deadline, accept orders by email with total quantity of chips ordered listed in the message title. After the deadline go through the orders beginning with the highest quantities first and do a trial allocation on each order until running out of chips (rejecting invalid orders along the way). After the available chips have been allocated to the orders, make an assessment as to whether the results represent a fair and reasonable distribution of chips. If the distribution doesn't pass the assessment, make adjustments using whatever privately determined criteria seems best. Send out invoices.

 

[Chipnut]

it’s a shame it’s cone to this. I’ve always looked forward to Jim’s sales at different times of the year and he has always tried to keep things as fair as possible.

Jim,
Thanks for all you’ve done. I’ll keep an eye out for your eBay sales, but I will definitely not be buying from the flippers. It’s ok to sell chips for a small profit after having them and hopefully playing with them for a while, but some of the quick turn around prices have been quite inflated and somewhat ridiculous. To each his own, but if the flippers we are all talking about get the hint, they may not want to hog up all the chips in fear of being stuck with them.
Thanks for the great sales Jim and hopefully things work themselves out and we get to enjoy more of your sales on this forum.

 

[Mr. Cheese]

I didn't participate in this sale but I just have to LOL at all these overly complicated suggestions that I'm seeing to make things "fair".

What if we just let Jim figure out how he wants to list his chips and leave it at that? Be happy he's bringing Paulson chips to market. If he says he's going to cancel any orders that don't follow the rules well then that's within his right. This is his property and he can do with it as he pleases. Trying to get him to follow some complicated system to make things "fair" it's understandable why he's just going to list them on eBay. I'm sure it will be a lot less headache for him.

 

[guinness]

If he’s not gaining the good feeling of helping out chippers here, why should he forgo potential profits and blow them out? Perfectly acceptable for him to reap the secondary market value.

I never said he couldn't charge higher prices, and "blow em out" wasn't referring to cheap. All chip room sales are intended to be blown out. I was responding to the problem around "didn't buy the correct ratio of chips to get certain denoms". Completely different.

Also, secondary markets are not always predictable. There's been some chiproom sales in the past (and I go back since inception) where the chips don't produce a huge flip market. I think a lot of us veterans can foresee what will be a hit but its not assumed until the chips reach peoples hands and reactions/conditions are advertised.

Jim can do whatever he wants obviously. If the community is crying about his (obvious) great sales, he can adjust accordingly.

 

[TheBigTater]

No matter what you do Jim, someone will always try and game the system. Letting the market place determine the price through eBay auctions will certainly put a crimp in the flippers game plan. If they have to pay full market value instead of s scooping them up here at bargain prices a lot of their incentive will be gone.

Thanks @TheChipRoom for all the great chips you've brought to the community over the years. :

 

[GoStumpy]

Jim,

We are all extremely thankful for the time and effort you put in to the planning and selling of chips on here, and honestly, we have *no fucking clue* how much effort and time you put in before this sales thread even starts, building relationships, garnering a reputation that allows you to know when a casino is losing their chips, and being able to buy them... and actually making the deals happen. That's an insane amount of skill, knowledge, communication, and integrity....

I can't speak for everybody but I HOPE that most of what you hear literally is just us (members of PCF) butthurt a bit that we didn't get what we wanted... and that's OK! There are more members than chips available most of the time, so please PLEASE remember you cannot please all the people all the time, and you WILL go insane trying to. As long as what you do makes YOU happy (until the complaining starts) and gets the job done by distributing the chips to the chipping community, I think that it has been a great success.

As for this particular sale....

Do we all want $500 chips? Sure! Are there enough for even 10% of buyers to get the quantity they want? Nope! No matter what 'limits' we talk about when there's only 400 available and there's 50+ people that want them... I don't think 8 per person is the solution... unless you want to limit them to a barrel per person and allow the PCF community classifieds to let members trade and sell...

We want Jim to do what he does best, and that is 100% finding and acquiring closing casino chips!! Spending so much time, money, trying to develop the 'perfect' selling strategy only to have it crash or something at sale time wouldn't be much better than the current system, no?

I'm not sure if it's possible, but could a site put together quantities that respect the limits and then add to papal cart all at once from that site? Instead of individually? That way a site could be made that allows you to select the chips you want and 'add to cart' your entire order, instead of messing with quantities in Paypal.

Anyway, I just want to say it again that what you do is amazing Jim, you do so much more than just put stuff for sale that we don't see, and please PLEASE don't let our emotions of what we did and didn't get make you think we are ungrateful.

 

[TheChipRoom]

While we appreciate all of the suggestions, we have 3rd party systems that integrate with PayPal. We are not looking to add any additional steps into the process. We will figure something out and be back selling chips here soon.

Jim

 

[BiGGyT]

Said like a seller who values his customer base.

Let me translate for the "hard to comprehend"

STFU, I heard you the first 16 times, we will try and figure out a different approach to stop the complaints. I should have sold them for $3/each on eBay and avoided the 215 PMs I got.

Thank you for your business!

 

[Nex]

 

[Venturalvn]

Said like a seller who values his customer base.

Let me translate for the "hard to comprehend"

STFU, I heard you the first 16 times, we will try and figure out a different approach to stop the complaints. I should have sold them for $3/each on eBay and avoided the 215 PMs I got.

Thank you for your business!

215 is 3.089 per customer but I only got to send him 2. I think next time we should be allowed to send him our highest number of PMs in the first 20 minutes for a PM pre pre-sale sale and then open up to other members after that.

 

[MegaTon44]

Do you know what I would do if I were Jim? Keep all the chips for my motherfuckin self, perhaps start my own underground casino. Sure as shit wouldn't sell to you assholes at discounted prices.


Seriously though, I never bought anything from you Jim, but thank you for giving PCF preference for some epic sales. If you had about 10,000 of those $500 chips, I would have snagged a rack or two.

 

[WedgeRock]

Saw this on Twitter and thought of this thread...

 

[AWenger]

People calling out other people for 'bending' the rules and using "loopholes," are somewhat ignoring the facts. Let's stick to the facts -- the limits/rules that had been listed in the first post included:

• "Limit of 2000 total chips per household"
• "$500 chips could be no more than 10% of the total order" (i.e. if someone ordered a full allotment of 2000 chips per household, they could order 200 $500 chips, within the rules)
• With regards to the number of potential buyers and interest, it's hard to say, but I counted at least 20-30 unique PCF accounts posting to the first 3 pages of this thread, likely even more by the end of the thread. Just for this exercise, let's assume that there were 50 to 60 different people who were interested in buying chips.
• As it turns out, there were only 21,600 total chips.
• If only 11 people ordered the maximum # of chips, 2000 each, the entire inventory of chips could be gone in as few as 11 orders, just following the rules and the limits.
• As it turns out, there were only 400 total $500 chips.
• The entire inventory of the $500 chips would have been gone in as few as 2 orders, just following the rules and the limits.

The parameters of the sale (limits/rules) and the small quantity of chips was what caused this sale to leave dozens of people without the opportunity to purchase chips and/or purchase specific denominations. This seems to have been the outcome. I don't know if that was the intended outcome, though.

Maybe the limits/rules could have been vetted more thoroughly in advance. If 1 or 2 well-known PCF members had been solicited for advice from before the sale, and informed that there were only 21,600 chips total and only 400 $500 chips, and to provide input privately, they may have advised to adjust the limits/rules downward to allow more people the opportunity to purchase chips (i.e. limit $500 chips to 20 each, instead of "10% of total" or what turned out to be 200, and limit sets to 600 or 800 instead of 2000; or add a limit set of 1000 if mostly $1 chips, etc.).

(P.S. full disclosure, I had been fully intending to participate in this sale, but on Sunday around 12:30 pm, after glancing at my overflowing chip storage shelves and depleted chip budget, I actually decided to sit this sale out, and I'm kind of glad I did.)

I am not sure what to do on the next 2 releases. The quantities on both are smaller than the Native Lights. I hate only offering sets, as everyone's needs are different.

I understand your quandry. I agree with the sentiment that everyone's needs are different. Maybe you can take some polls to see what kind of sets people are interested in (i.e. 300 chip sets, 400, 600, 800; limit; low NL cash set; higher NL cash set; tourney, etc.) and craft 3 or 4 different types of sets based on the breakdown of chips available, and seeing what sets people are most interested in.

Thanks and sorry for the trouble.

Thank you.

Until we can come up with a better solution, the next sales (Native Lights Secondary and Tonkawa) are going to eBay.

I tend to agree that eBay may be the best place for everyone to compete to buy chips that are very limited in quantity.

 

[maxim_666666]

I didn't participate in this sale but I just have to LOL at all these overly complicated suggestions that I'm seeing to make things "fair".

What if we just let Jim figure out how he wants to list his chips and leave it at that? Be happy he's bringing Paulson chips to market. If he says he's going to cancel any orders that don't follow the rules well then that's within his right. This is his property and he can do with it as he pleases. Trying to get him to follow some complicated system to make things "fair" it's understandable why he's just going to list them on eBay. I'm sure it will be a lot less headache for him.

you just read my mind ...
whatever Jim did with his chips, I like him for one simple thing. He likes chips. And this alone is enough. The same thing we can say about Tommy.
Guys, enough to wail like old grannies... It is better to go and check your supplies of detergents ... I can not wait until you wash them and start spreading photos ..

 

[GoStumpy]

With so few chips, VERY MANY and probably the majority of the buyers are going to 'not get what they want', but in reality, tough peanuts right? We are all grown ass men (and women?) and we can accept that sometimes things don't work out. None of this was SUPER IMPORTANT stuff, just a nice hobby. It may seem like there's a bunch of unhappy customers, but in reality, it's just a moment in time, and it'll pass

 

[TheChipRoom]

I will definitely look at all the suggestions. In hindsight I should have put more limits on the $500s. My thoughts were that someone ordering a 1000 chip set could get a full rack. But what happened was that 2 orders got 160 each, 20 for samples and that only left 20 for others. My bad.

Jim

 

[Ronoh]

People calling out other people for 'bending' the rules and using "loopholes," are somewhat ignoring the facts.

There was also a post a few days before the sale from someone flat out saying "this is my strategy going in..." which received a number of responses more-or-less saying "good idea" and not a single one that even vaguely said it was against the rules or frowned upon.

I'm not sure it was folks trying to game the system as much as it was people just not understanding as it was never made clear (I know I always assumed percentage restrictions were based on total order).

Easiest solution could be adding a note specifying the limitations are per order along with a disclaimer stating anyone breaking said rules will have their orders cancelled and they will be banned from future ChipRoom sales. Can't see anyone taking that risk

 

[justsomedude]

My bad.

You have nothing to apologize for.

 

[Jeff]

I suggest that anyone wanting Jim to go to a bunch of extra time and effort to make the sales more "fair" should pay him for the privilege.

Fifty bucks non-refundable to jump the line and get into the "lottery" or whatever for your pick of what you want up to some pre-determined amount. Depending on how many people pay you still may not get exactly what you want, but you'll have a "fair" shot. The "entry fee" without guaranteed return would keep out at least some of the shoe clerks and crumb bums who are looking to flip or buying a bunch of chips just because they happen to have money, fast fingers and good internet (i.e. just because they can.) Anything left over goes into a free-for-all sale as normal. Jim gets paid for his extra few hours time to deal with it, and nobody can bitch afterwards.

Lol at the "crumb bum". A great old-timey term! Love it!

 

[Ben]

Lol at the "crumb bum". A great old-timey term! Love it!

I can't take credit; I clearly jacked that line from comedic titan Norman Chad. We can't all be wizards.

 

[Venturalvn]

I will definitely look at all the suggestions. In hindsight I should have put more limits on the $500s. My thoughts were that someone ordering a 1000 chip set could get a full rack. But what happened was that 2 orders got 160 each, 20 for samples and that only left 20 for others. My bad.

Jim

You 100% have no reason to apologize to us. Some of us are whiners, and all of us are weirdos with a strange hobby. The thing that keeps us going, though, are people like you who supply us and allow us an outlet that we otherwise wouldn't have.

You already do enough with all the work you do on the back end, so I only have one suggestion for your sales going forward: do whatever's easiest for YOU.

 

[Jeff]

I was thinking Archie Bunker.

 

[MacGrad]

Saw this on Twitter and thought of this thread...

View attachment 126075

This poster is bull crap.

I highly doubt Oprah has ever done a Spartan race.

 

[maxim_666666]

I will definitely look at all the suggestions. In hindsight I should have put more limits on the $500s. My thoughts were that someone ordering a 1000 chip set could get a full rack. But what happened was that 2 orders got 160 each, 20 for samples and that only left 20 for others. My bad.

Jim

The most disgusting, in this situation, is that a person is more likely to want to sell them for profit.
But, on the other hand, if I'm wrong, in his intentions, then I really can understand it ...

 

[Josh Kifer]

Thanks alot guys!!!! Look what you did!!!! I leave for 12 hours and everything is messed up!!!

 

[PokerMike]

Thank god this is a forum. A place to discuss. Where the views of the opposition are respected and even contemplated.

With that being said.

I do not understand why so many people here keep this hobby in the dark.
I asked about slabbing and grading here not that long ago. With the replies I received, you would have thought I asked for your wives phone numbers.
Absolutely, selfishly short sighted of you who posted negative replies.

Jim should always let the free market determine the value of his goodies.
Sell em all on eBay Jim! You have earned the right to earn what is rightfully yours.
I actually believe those that oppose Jim selling on eBay are probably the flippers.
If 100 people that don't currently collect or own chips happens to see Jims goods on eBay, maybe, over time, this hobby would grow exponentially. Hence an increase in the value of all of our chips!
What a novel idea.

No worries, I have thick skin and don't mind all you whiners blasting me...

 

[Josh Kifer]

I made two pair! Finally!

 

[FDLmold]

I will definitely look at all the suggestions. In hindsight I should have put more limits on the $500s. My thoughts were that someone ordering a 1000 chip set could get a full rack. But what happened was that 2 orders got 160 each, 20 for samples and that only left 20 for others. My bad. Jim

Given that the original % limit on the 500s was double, I was surprised to see the 25c and $500 chips in basically the same numbers in the inventory. I buy extra boardgames from overseas and kickstarter frequently, with the intent to resell and fund that hobby. I know I've biffed it a time or two on things like this. It's easy to do.

These are the first chipcage-chiproom-forumsale chips I've ever bought, and I'm excited to get them. I want to see the other chips sold here, because I think that would be awesome, because this hobby rocks and I like it here.

I am a fan of easy solutions, and I realize I am Monday Morning Quarterbacking. I think The Chip Cage dba The Chip Room can easily keep selling chips here with very little extra effort.

Modified sale rules:

1) Max one barrel of $500 per household.
2) Keep the same percentages on the chips, I think those worked pretty well.
3) Max 1000 chip order total per household. (There were only ~20000 chips, allowing a "10% of the total casino order" up front is too high. I would let that person pay secondary market prices for the rest of a set that large.)
4) Any order not meeting the above (until limits are lifted, anyway) will be cancelled and subsequent orders from same address will be ignored.

#4 is the only manual part, but it keeps people honest because if they try to cheat the system or if their math stinks, they will get nothing, better luck next time. As crummy orders come in you have to manually put those chips back into the system.

At least nineteen members could have gotten some five-hundos. Given the limited quantities of chips, I don't think anybody would complain about a 5-25-100-500 tourney set in the quantities 400-240-140-20 or something similar, and then people can go on the secondary market to enhance the set. Nobody could have gotten a rack of 25c, but there were only 380 of them, so I'm not sure anybody should get a rack of them off the bat.

I'm done with my 20/20 hindsight now. I thought I had something constructive to say, so I said it. Yeah I get it. GFY FDLmold, FOAD GTFO blah blah blah. We love you Jim, thanks for driving to Oklahoma to get these.

 

[Poker Zombie]

I actually believe those that oppose Jim selling on eBay are probably the flippers.

How odd that you would think that. Most of the people here collect chips, and they play with those chips. They share their chips in the poker chip's natural environment - on the felt.

The hobby is far from "kept in the dark". Most of my players don't care which chips I use, but I merrily tell them all about the chips that I bring out. I share my hobby quite a bit - it's not my fault that most people are normal and thus, don't care.

Most of the people here aren't concerned about increasing the value of our chips. In fact, there are numerous threads where the discussion is about crazy inflated prices. When Jim releases chips to us for a discount, we love to buy them up - not to resell, but to have yet another set to put into rotation at our home games. When someone picks up an epic looking set, that set is often requested to make an appearance at a meet-up, where once again those chips are put into play.

Many sets are built a little bit at a time. It is a time consuming labor of love. Sometimes those sets never get completed, and so the Classified section becomes active as people buy-sell-trade to get the funds or chips to complete a dream set, or to help someone else complete their dream set.

I can only think you are viewing chip collecting from the point of view of a coin collector. Those people don't intend to use their coins. They simply collect, and sometime sell, hoping the value goes up over time.

Chip collectors are a different breed. We are both classified as numismatics, but the comparison ends pretty quickly - for the vast majority of us.