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Windwalker’s Chipping Journey in Pr0n0grAph1C Detail (4 Viewers)

Hello also, pretty babies!

DED51782-82FC-4297-BA43-1E5C39844E59.jpeg
 
Dang. The greatest chip set collector there ever was acquired more than most of us ever could. He was an OMC and didn’t even know about CT PCF or CD. He chillin in his retirement with mint casino paulsons that never even entered a casino. Soo gangsta!!! WW met the OG of our hobby.
 
This is remarkable, and I can't wait to see the unveiling(s)!
 
Dang I've been on a little break from PCF. Came back to checkout the 15+ new pages in this thread as the pr0n is always amazing and there are some great home game pictures going on. I come to find out about a sick new haul and incredible story about a stash of chips. Kudos Kirish. That took some serious dedication and it is so damn cool that you got to meet one of the people responsible for this forum's favorite sets. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it haha. Can't wait for the chip pr0n. I will be checking back in daily for the time being lol.
 
Windwalker said:
I didn’t come anywhere close to doing a full inventory sweep, but different boat casinos had different limits, and so many of the sets are broken up differently.

Some don’t have fracs at all, some have more roulette chips than others, and some of the boat casinos had $5k/$25k chips.

He didn’t think of breakdowns like we do, he thought of them more as a full, large samples of work he and his team had done. They just ended up being the equivalent of playable sets, they way we think about them.
I have a bunch of sorting work to do once I have them in hand.
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Can't wait to see pics. This guy must've been baller to HODL that much in chips.
 
gopherblue said:
Can't wait to see pics. This guy must've been baller to HODL that much in chips.
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Yeah, misnomer. The deal he made to keep them for his portfolio, but in uncancelled state required a unique escrow mechanic. HODL implies he could have realized the face value of the chips while live. He couldn’t. (With some exceptions).
 
Note: The RCVL set above is not mine. I found it in the PCF Gallery.


I’m intrigued, if WW is willing to discuss it further, to hear more about the “ingenious escrow-based system that allowed him to have the sets for the company’s portfolio, and included some of the chip value in his actual compensation.”

Here’s my question. Asking it straight up, no judgment. I’m just thinking I gotta be missing something here.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest that 22 sets, ranging from 1,500-3,000 chips, with every denom represented by at least 10 chips (more likely a barrel), some with fracs, some without, including a few with denoms as high as $5K or $25K,* would have a total collective face value of a minimum of $500K, running potentially as high as $2,000,000. I would guesstimate closer to $950,000 total.

In 1960s-1990s dollars.

Having some familiarity with the graphic design industry both as a practitioner and a magazine writer, I know that designers were pretty poorly-compensated until really the last 15-20 years. Still are, for the most part, unless you get the gig to redesign a Pepsi can. Graphic design services were often considered the very last stage of a product design, and sadly not a very important one—an afterthought for all but the most enlightened companies. (You still see this negligence of type sometimes in movie credits, where the same guys who spend $250 million on a film appear to have had their nephew set the type in iMovie.)

A lot of what we now consider valuable, essential “industrial” product design work is now handled by superstars with massive computers and giant teams. But back then, a lot of stuff just got jobbed out to the guy who ran the printshop. Or someone in-house, who would be pretty low on the totem pole. It’s just letters surrounded by a few doo-dads, slap something on there.

There were exceptions of course for absolute design stars. But there weren’t that many designers with big shops—for example, Massimo Vignelli, Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, and a few others. (Two of these three I actually met.) And by “big” shops, you’re still talking pretty small potatoes. It wasn’t until firms like Pentagram began swallowing up other shops in the late 80s that you started to get design behemoths that more than a handful of people outside of the industry would ever even hear of.

So, while people here properly consider someone who crafted 20+ sets of boat labels a design god who deserved to get paid big bucks, unfortunately I doubt this work was terribly remunerative, whether on a salaried basis or on contract.

All that said: My question is, if the designer of these sets took part of their value as an offset from a salary or flat fee, but never actually cashed any of them in, well... How on earth did he manage that? Maybe he was independently wealthy. Because $250-$500K could represent a large fraction of someone’s lifetime earnings in that industry back in the day.

Anyway... As I said, maybe I missed something obvious and am being dense. Whatever the case, I’d love to interview the guy. Sounds like he had a dream gig.


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* Re. the high denoms: Giant field poker tournaments not being that big a thing during that period, I assume most high denom chips were actually played for their true dollar value, not as imaginary tokens in a tourney. And of course most casino action isn’t even in the poker room.
 
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wow.. congrats WW on the epic buy and what a fantastic story, too!

Windwalker said:
My goal for the previous post was to primarily provide some basic info and put an end to the speculation.
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Sorry if I riled up the folks about speculating. I just think most of us chippers like to try to guess at what they could be. The intent was not to derail or cause any negativity.

Windwalker said:
Chips, to me, are the epitome of examples of where design thinking and strategy are critical.
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This is a very cool statement. I am not in design professionally but first started collecting older chips because I love the styles of the 50s and 60s chips. Also most folks may not realize that in the old days the artwork/logos were used not only for chips, but for everything from stationary, business cards, matches, and print advertising and brochures, etc.

Windwalker said:
there are dozens of PCFers with incredible sets that they never talk about / write about or post photos of. For now, just consider these among those.
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This is true. Not that I have a ton of incredible sets that folks have not seen, but there are many reasons I don't post a lot of photos. Ranges from being too lazy to clean and take pics (and my photo skills suck) to I don't want a bunch of PMs asking me if they are for sale.
 
gmunny said:
This is true. Not that I have a ton of incredible sets that folks have not seen, but there are many reasons I don't post a lot of photos. Ranges from being too lazy to clean and take pics (and my photo skills suck) to I don't want a bunch of PMs asking me if they are for sale.
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PMs, eh? I'll do it all out in the open...whaddya got fer sale, TRK-god?!?!? Daddy needs some unicorns!
 
Taghkanic said:
Note: The RCVL set above is not mine. I found it in the PCF Gallery.


I’m intrigued, if WW is willing to discuss it further, to hear more about the “ingenious escrow-based system that allowed him to have the sets for the company’s portfolio, and included some of the chip value in his actual compensation.”

Here’s my question. Asking it straight up, no judgement. I’m just thinking I gotta be missing something here.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest that 22 sets, ranging from 1,500-3,000 chips, with every denom represented by at least 10 chips (more likely a barrel), some with fracs, some without, including a few with denoms as high as $5K or $25K,* would have a total collective face value of a minimum of $500K, running potentially as high as $2,000,000. I would guesstimate closer to $950,000 total.

In 1960s-1990s dollars.

Having some familiarity with the graphic design industry both as a practitioner and a magazine writer, I know that the graphic design industry was pretty poorly-compensated until really the last 20 years. Still is, for the most part, unless you get the gig to redesign a Pepsi can. Graphic design services were often considered the very last stage of a product design, and sadly not a very important one—an afterthought for all but the most enlightened companies. (You still see this negligence of type sometimes in movie credits, where the same guys who spend $250 million on a film appear to have had their nephew set the type in iMovie.)

A lot of what we now consider valuable, essential “industrial” product design work is now handled by superstars with massive computers and giant teams. But back then, a lot of stuff just got jobbed out to the guy who ran the printshop. Or someone in-house, who would be pretty low on the totem pole. It’s just letters surrounded by a few doo-dads, slap something on there.

There were exceptions of course for absolute design stars. But there weren’t that many designers with big shops—for example, Massimo Vignelli, Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, and a few others. (Two of these three I actually met.) And by “big” shops, you’re still talking pretty small potatoes. It wasn’t until firms like Pentagram began swallowing up other shops in the late 80s that you started to get design behemoths that more than a handful of people outside of the industry would ever even hear of.

So, while people here properly consider someone who crafted 20+ sets of boat labels a design god who deserved to get paid big bucks, unfortunately I doubt this work was terribly remunerative, whether on a salaried basis or on contract.

All that said: My question is, if the designer of these sets took part of their value as an offset from a salary or flat fee, but never actually cashed any of them in, well... How on earth did he manage that? Maybe he was independently wealthy. $250-$500K could represent a large fraction of someone’s lifetime earnings in that industry back in the day.

Anyway... As I said, maybe I missed something obvious and am being dense. Whatever the case, I’d love to interview the guy. Sounds like he had a dream gig.


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* Re. the high denoms: Giant field poker tournaments not being that big a thing during that period, I assume most high denom chips were actually played for their true dollar value, not as imaginary tokens in a tourney. And of course most casino action isn’t even in the poker room.
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Fair question, I had the same. Here’s how I understand the mechanic they created. Quite simple, really.

There were two scenarios, and different mechanics activated for each.

Scenario 1: The artifacts and chips were designed / manufactured, but the ship or cruise line never set sail. This happened more often than you would think, because the bulk of expenses with ships, especially new ones, were in manufacturing, and in addition, sometimes licenses were not awarded. There are plenty of examples of those right here on PCF. In this scenario, if the ship was considered DOA, and assets were either sold through distributors or destroyed, the firm was allowed to keep samples of all their artifacts, including chips. These were chips that were never live.

Scenario 2: The ship sailed, chips were live. While the firm was allowed to keep samples right away of most other artifacts (table designs, collateral), an initial sample set of chips were marked, encased in glass or lucite and provided as display for their portfolio. ONLY in the case of the chips, a 3rd party escrow company held the chips until one of two things happened: the chips were no longer accepted by the casino, or the ship was rebranded. The escrow and paperwork fees were paid for as part of the compensation for the design firm. (Usually about $3000-$8000, according to him, in total). He said in most cases, chips were released to him within 3-4 years, some even within months, because of how frequently vessels changed hands and owners, and the penchant for new owners to re-brand. A few of them were only released after almost a decade, he said.

That’s why the live value of the chips didn’t matter. While they sat in escrow, all they were worth was the manufacturing cost from Paulson, not the face value of the chip.

P.S. The RVCL set you posted is mine :)

P.P.S. For chips, they didn’t just design the labels, they had the knowledge and experience to create progressions, and had a great working relationship with Paulson / GPI.
 
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Did this gentleman and his design firm only design chips (and related casino-oriented collateral), or were they responsible for the imagery for the entire ship, with the casino being merely one aspect of their work?

Random side thought - Maybe I should get a custom set made with Disney Cruise Lines branding, for the lulz...
 
CrazyEddie said:
Did this gentleman and his design firm only design chips (and related casino-oriented collateral), or were they responsible for the imagery for the entire ship, with the casino being merely one aspect of their work?

Random side thought - Maybe I should get a custom set made with Disney Cruise Lines branding, for the lulz...
Click to expand...
Different contracts were different. Design firms always want to expand, and the holy grail for him was to get the contract for the entire ship — visual branding for all aspects, including the ever important direct mail collateral, which was the #1 communications piece back then for cruises, since the Web didn’t exist.

I reached him through the former CEO of Starlite Cruises, who described him as the go-to-guy for boat casinos.
 
@Windwalker did you get any sense of his process? Did he design the logos used in the inlays? What inputs/tasking/direction did he receive? How much leeway did he have? So curious to hear his story.
 
And a real shame a lot of his work never hit the dock.
 

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