Review
Theme
The inlay u see has always been my logo throughout my university years as an architecture student. The “TD” is my initials, which represents Tai Duy. The color red and yellow is the color of my home country flag Vietnam. You can see an image of my country in the back. It is graded from dark down to light (North to South). I come from Ho Chi Minh City which is located in the South.
Edge Spots
I am not much on the bright and flashy colors. I prefer my chips to have a very suddle and monochromatic look. I find that the bright edge spots tend to take away from the beauty of the mold and inlay which, ideally, is the most important thing about a chip.
Mold
Roman all the way. Why? Because, thematically, it fits in well with everything. Many people reject the roman mold and I have no idea why. This mold is by far the nicest choice out of all of them. At first glance and feel, they do not appeal to me, but believe me, once they break in, they are fantastic. I am not that big on the A-mold or the H-mold. Thematically, both those molds do not fit well with most design and they tend to have a very “CLINK” sound to them which reminds me of my dice chips. I showed all 3 molds to the 30 people at my firm and they all agree that the roman looks the nicest. Many feel that the horsy looks very girly unless you plan to do a “Lord of Rings” or “The Godfather” theme. The comment on the A-mold was plain and simple, “what does the A stand for?” Sorry for being so negative on these 2 molds.
Denominations
The denominations are designed more so for “cash games” than tournaments. That is, they are low and mostly in even numbers to make blinds and raises much easier. However, they can be nearly affective in tournaments. Many forum members who ordered custom chips tend to use a lot of high denominations (100, 500, 1000, 5000, etc). Unless if these are the actual values they are playing with, I see no purpose in trying to take yourself out of reality. I prefer the denominations on my chips to represent its actual value in play. That is, $1 actually equals $1. If the tournament buy-in is $50, each player will receive actual $50 worth of chips.
Quantity
1500 total:
500 x 25cents, LT green / DG green
200 x 50cents, pink / DG pink
400 x $1, white / grey
200 x $5 red / mandarin red
100 x $10 purple / lavender
Plus approximately 100 extras
Service
PC.com has some of the nicest customer service representatives I had ever dealt with in this business. They replied quickly to emails and really kept me up-to-date on the status of my order. The one thing that blew me away was their concern for my final product. As you can see from the pictures, the color combinations are very unusual. PC took precise care and concern for the final product and sent me about 50 samples of my chips to make sure that I was satisfied with how they look before sending them off for a mass production.
Quality
I must say that the chips are good for the money. The colors and mold turned out fantastic. I am a little disappointed in the quality of the inlay “prints”. Many of the prints (not inlay) seem to be off center (or uneven border). Most people do not realize this because they chose a solid white background color. With my design, u can see that I have a black background with a white border. Many of the prints have the black surface pushed more to one side leaving one end of the white border to be much larger than the other. Those that printed out correctly looked fantastic. The brass flakes do annoy me at first, but after several weeks of use, they will blend right into the chip. You will not notice them, and even if you do, they will not look like brass and will give your chips a more solid looking texture.
Overall thoughts
I am happy with the outcome. The service was great, the chips were good for the money and the colors turned out fantastic. Though the quality of PC chips is not nearly as great as the Paulson casino chips, they are the closest you can get. Until PC.com decides to provide giant inlays and multi-color edge spots, I feel that HPC.com will always be a major competitor. I still value clay knowing that they will last me a life time whereas chipcos will most likely show signs of wear within 5 years.
Sorry, I only have individual pictures at the moment. I am having a hard time photographing these babies and had to use my company’s high resolution scanner to do the job.
ADDED a few more PICS. Still working on the white and the red. The red is by far the nicest, but also the hardest to get an accurate picture on so please be patient with me.
