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If you're looking to buy poker chips you see all sorts of descriptions given for the material...
There's plastic chips, composite-clay/China-clay, ceramic, "real clay", etc., etc. - But as it turns out clay chips aren't actually made from just clay and ceramic chips aren't actually made from ceramic. It's all a bit of plastic-y mess. With all sorts of other things mixed in, like metal slugs or metal flakes of different kinds. And even within each segment there's differentiations like ceramic vs "casino quality ceramic". (I have samples of chips marketed as such and the "casino quality" ones have laminated sides, rounder corners and a different surface finish, but is the material itself different - as suggested by the phrasing - I can't tell.)
In the cheaper segment everyone calls everything "clay", no matter what it really is. It's an obsession. And if they don't outright say "clay" they try to work it into similar-sounding terms. (What on earth is "claytec"?)
Even on reputable sites like Apache it's hard to tell. The description of the Pharaoh's starts out by saying "Each chip is solid clay" and then further down it calls them "new China Clay chips". But "China clay" essentially means injection-molded plastics with added materials to make them fill a bit more like clay, no?
No one ever says what's actually in the chips. (Well, Roxley tried, bless 'em: They say the Iron Clays are made of 64% limestone and other clay minerals, 24% synthetic compounds and 12% iron core - but even that is somewhat vague)
So how can I actually tell what is what? And what's just marketing-speak?
Am I forever doomed to order samples of everything?![Smile :) :)](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png)
There's plastic chips, composite-clay/China-clay, ceramic, "real clay", etc., etc. - But as it turns out clay chips aren't actually made from just clay and ceramic chips aren't actually made from ceramic. It's all a bit of plastic-y mess. With all sorts of other things mixed in, like metal slugs or metal flakes of different kinds. And even within each segment there's differentiations like ceramic vs "casino quality ceramic". (I have samples of chips marketed as such and the "casino quality" ones have laminated sides, rounder corners and a different surface finish, but is the material itself different - as suggested by the phrasing - I can't tell.)
In the cheaper segment everyone calls everything "clay", no matter what it really is. It's an obsession. And if they don't outright say "clay" they try to work it into similar-sounding terms. (What on earth is "claytec"?)
Even on reputable sites like Apache it's hard to tell. The description of the Pharaoh's starts out by saying "Each chip is solid clay" and then further down it calls them "new China Clay chips". But "China clay" essentially means injection-molded plastics with added materials to make them fill a bit more like clay, no?
No one ever says what's actually in the chips. (Well, Roxley tried, bless 'em: They say the Iron Clays are made of 64% limestone and other clay minerals, 24% synthetic compounds and 12% iron core - but even that is somewhat vague)
So how can I actually tell what is what? And what's just marketing-speak?
Am I forever doomed to order samples of everything?
![Smile :) :)](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png)