These are my very favorite slugged chips. I love the design.
They were marketed a while back as "Lucky Birch". They were in stock through a retailer on
Amazon and via a couple of second-hand outlets including
eBay, but they ran out of stock sometime in the last year and the
Amazon page is now defunct. My guess is that this was someone who had an idea for a nice graphic design and had a big batch made in China, then sold them off through
Amazon, made a small profit over a couple of years as a side gig, and is now done with it.
The breakdowns sold as packaged sets on
Amazon were terrible, and there was no way to buy individual denominations. I bought some before really knowing what a good breakdown was, and I've been struggling ever since to get my hands on more.
I recently saw someone selling a big batch of these on
eBay as "VIP Poker Chips" (because the label says "VIP" - I'm pretty sure I'm the only person left in the world who knows what "Lucky Birch poker chips" means). I grabbed them and now finally have an okay breakdown.
I agree that the design is badass. The grey $1 and the white $100 just adds to the badassery.
Here's a product render that was used in the marketing:
View attachment 853421
And a better one:
View attachment 853422
Here's a splash pot of my own chips:
View attachment 853424
The base chip is readily available from alibaba vendors, but with different labels. I've never seen the "VIP" label again. The base chip is a "wheat and crown" chip; the base color is black, with a wheat ear in the spot color on black and three different crowns in molded into the spots. There are some other similar base chips, but with a white base instead of black. Here are some examples:
View attachment 853432
Link:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Thickness-3-3mm-Poker-Chips-Clay_60781268182.html but if you just look around you can find lots of other vendors that are selling similar chips.
If your buddy with the underground game really wants to get more of these, he could probably contact one of the alibaba vendors that's showing the same base chips, then send over a sample of the VIP chips and have the vendor duplicate the label. But if he's going to that much effort he might as well get his own custom label produced (and if he does, let me know, maybe he'll sell me his old ones!).
Good luck! If I run across any more I'll let you know.