I was first attracted to buying customized labels because of just that -- they were fully customized to my liking. They were also in my rock bottom low price range. After visiting the retailer's website and seeing some of the great artwork on 1" labels, I knew these were for me. A few emails back and forth worked everything out and completed the order. In a little less than two weeks I received the labels. After about 4 hours of applying labels, I had customized my chips. Yes, it does take a very long time to "stick" all the chips on both sides. It was worth it 100 percent.
$39.99 for 1015 labels (1 label for each side of the chips plus a few extras for missalignments) $89.99 for 500 Dice chips and labels The price is just amzing. You really won't be able to find anything cheaper than this. It's just an amazing bang for your buck deal.
Well, I applied my labels to the infamous full 11.5 gram Dice chips. To be blunt, the feel of these dice chips is bad, plain and simple. However, with the labels the chips are a little less slick. They still glide pretty easily against other slick surfaces so that's a pretty big negative. The labels give the generally smooth chips more texture and more "feel" to them. This is a definitive positive. When you rub your fingers against a labelled and non-labelled chip you notice a distinct difference. While rubbing the label you can easily feel the bumps and hatches from the labels: these little things add a lot of character to you chips. My rating is the feel of the labels, not of the chips themselves. These labels do make the chips a little thicker. This is because the dice chips don't have a recessed center. I found that 100 chips that normally fit into racks don't when the 100 chips are labelled.
With the labels the chips stack a little higher and you can move the stacks around alot easier. Without labels I would guess that you could stack maybe 20-25 chips without anything falling. With the labels I can stack 35 chips pretty easily and move them around and they don't fall down. With about 15 labeled chips I could gently "tap" the stack and it would stay in fairly good shape without falling. With 20 labled chips stacked and tapped the stack would fall with less effort. Overall the labels do affect the stacking in a positive way. The chips seem to stick to each other a little more but it's really not that noticable at all. This could be better. Again the rating is based on how the chips stack with a label compared to without a lablel.
The sound of the Dice chips without labels is nearly like dropping a quarter, really bad. With labels the sound is still pretty bad. The labels do make a very slight positive change but like I said it's still pretty bad. Without labels the sound is a very high pitched "clink". With labels it is very slightly lower pitched. When first shuffling these chips I noticed a little bit bigger difference, but after handling them longer the "clink" sound still comes through. The labels don't hardly make an impact at all to the overall sound of the chips striking each other so they score pretty low in this column.
In my opinion the looks are really great. They use high quality paper and laser color printer which make the labels just look great. I never knew you could design such great artwork in 1" of space. The labels improve the chip's appearance 10 times and more. The labels are completely 100 percent customizable and you can really create a work of art. On the label in the colored background there is a bit of glitter or sparkle. Yes glitter. When you first look at the chip you can't see it at all, but when you tip the chip on its side a little you can clearly see it. I'm not sure if all designs have this glitter but my particular design does. At first I didn't really like the glitter because it was kind of girly for a manly man like me but it really did grow on me. After I get past the girly part the glitter really does look great. The looks rating is how the chips' looks improve with lablels.
The security of these chips with labels, compared to without labels, is huge. Without labels there are millions of dice chips floating around the world and maybe even a few floating out of someone's pocket and into your games. With labels, however, these are yours and you will never see the same chips in a different game. You will never have to worry about some cheaters bringing in some "extra" chips. This fact make the chips extremely safe. The originality of the chips is also great. As previously mentioned, these are fully customizable. You can change and design these to be whatever you want. Use your imagination and your artistic side to design something really great. Overall, the security and originality of the labels is a huge positive.
The durablity of these chips seems average to good. After firmly applying the labels I can still pull it off fairly easily. This can be a positive. If you missalign the label you can quickly peel it off and place it back on. However, it's not really a good thing if players start "picking" at the labels and they lift pretty easily. After a few of my home games they are still in excellent shape. After "torturing" my labels I can see how the durability really stacks up. When I pour water onto the chips the durability really goes to hell. After putting water on them and rubbing you can rub half of the label off. With my fingernail I can pull the label off pretty easily. I scratched at a label pretty hard for close to 30 seconds. The label still appeared to be in pretty good shape after the scratching. One positive that I did notice with the labels is that you can wipe food off easily with no leftover marks. We were eating pizza while playing with these and somone accidently dropped sauce on the label. The sauce wiped clean with no effort. Under normal usage (and no liquid spills!) these really should last a pretty long time.
Overall, I would recommend these labels to anyone wanting a cheap alternative to expensive customized chips. There really aren't too many negatives about these at all. You can get 500 chips fully customized for under $90. This is by far the best bang for your buck custom chip. You can search and search but you won't find anything cheaper than labeled chips. It's easiest and best to apply labels in recessed centers, but it's not needed. I successfully applied my labels onto chips that didn't have any recess centers.
Here is what the final design of all five chips look like after applying all of the labels. These chips have been handled in a couple home games and do show some wear. You can notice the most wear on the red $5 chip. This picture shows a water damaged label. Look how bad of shape it is in. Really the only way to avoid damaging your labels this badly is to just keep water and other liquid away. This picture shows a label after hard scratching for nearly 30 seconds. It still appears to be in okay shape. In the center you can see some of the damage This shows what a chip with a peeled label looks like. The label itself is still in fairly good shape and comes up pretty clean. The part of the sticky underside of the label that is exposed to the air is still fairly sticky after stting out over night.
