This should be called "how I came to have a buttload of chips very quickly". Not quite an epic but a tale of some note for those of mind to aquire custom ceramic cheques.
To begin:
I'd been thinking about getting a set of custom ceramics for tournaments for a while but up until this point I couldn't find the correct confluence of price, quality, low minimum, and reasonable turnaround time. There are a lot of good choices out there for ceramics; obviously there's ChipCo (you really need to order quantity to justify the art fees), BR Pros (I've seen mixed results, some very good some, enh), the new and controversial Chinese Connection chips (please lets not start on that just now), and of course Nevada Jacks. NJs are made very close to me so I liked that, but to this point the consumer chips and the stock house designs really hadn't done it for me. If I was going to splash out some cash I really wanted a full custom job. Then came "March Madness", NJ had a sale that had my name all over it.
So while waiting for my custom ASMs to come (cash set only) I thought I'd take advantage of the unbelieveably cheap prices (IIRC .69/chip + $25 custom edge + shipping) and quick turnaround (1 week guaranteed) and see what I could come up with. Together with my main graphic man and Pines regular Petey "Mo" we came up with a pretty hot design. I'd submitted some early roughs which he tweaked (that is to say invented a super hot design that was only marginally related to my original and about 10X better). I shipped camera ready art to Jim at Nevada Jacks the last day of March. Even though the sale was only on the stock designs he honored the quote he made to me, the first in a long line of consessions and bonuses that speak volumes to the kind of customer service you can get from these folks. More on that to come.
I ordered 600 chips (chips must be ordered in batches of 100 though if you check the NJ section here you'll see he can sometimes work around that) in the quantity 200/200/100/100 (no $ values of 25/100/500/1000) which would make a nifty set for the one or so table tournies I do opposite cash games. I figured I could stretch the set to 16-20 players if required. Perfect should last me a while.
Now here's the good news - bad news - good news portion of the affair. The chips came one week to the day and looked great with the colors matches being perfect in all case (well except one but it's very minor), and I'd picked some oddball colors. Really oddball. The mustard yellow was just a bit too dark, but nothing worth complaining about and I'd been warned that they'd match as close as possible with some lightening or darkening be a part of the printing process with these. With all of that one color being slightly too dark was nothing. The only real problem was the "insert" of the chip (if you know ceramics you know what I mean). This part of the art had a circle of text that read "Mt. Pleasant Series of Poker" top and bottom with the top being black text on white and the bottom being that reversed. The printing on the bottom came out nearly illegible. In very strong light you could see it but held at arms length or normal indoor lighting the reverse text was basically barely visible. If it had printed full black it wouldn't have been so bad but you could tell that something was there, you just couldn't tell what.
Well I was a bit bummed. In every other respect the chips were great. Full weight, good feel, great colors, perfect stacking (not one spinner in the lot), nice sound, good spots, good printing, etc. The reverse printing problem just stuck in my craw so I E-mailed Jim at NJ and sent a couple of samples of each chip explaining my dissatisfaction. He E-mailed me back right away (btw there was good, quick,friendly, and constant communication the whole time) that he wasn't around when my job was finished so he didn't get to QC 'em but he'd take a look at the chips I'd sent. When he got 'em he said he thought he knew what the problem was and could fix (I'm guessing with the bleed you need to increase font size on any resverse, this is probably true of all ceramics or printed chips, keep it in mind). He put forward the idea of instead of sending the "defective" chips back, how would I feel about paying a miniscule bit for material and he'd reprint and I could keep the first set. To me that's more than fair. The "defective" chips were perfectly fine other than the print thing, so I'd end up with and entire extra set of emergency chips and for a pittance a new set of fixed chips effectively doubling my stash. Deal on.
A few days later I got a sample of the new chip and they looked absolutely perfect. I gave the print it order. I asked him to lighten up the mustard yellow color on my 100 which he did.
I got the chips today and they are basically **** hot. If there was once complaint the mustard yellow wasn't really lightened on the spot but it's a very, very minor thing. Jim had told me that they were changing the base material again to be more ceramic like. The new chips feel and sound just like ChipCos, which is stellar in my book. I'm a clay snob but I've always had a thing for that ChipCo clink. The feel is wee bit different, I think I prefer the new chips to the old, though the old material does have a few things to recommend it (I think they might be more scratch resistant). The faces still have the texturing that most of you are familiar with from Skulls and Desert Sands, which I believe is literally a face saving effort. No white ring, because of the texturing. For those who like very sharp lines this might cause some problems, but I'd designed incorporating that knowledge. I think the clearness of image on the current chips surpasses the past NJs that I've seen. It may not be quite as sharp as ChipCo or some of the BRs and Chinese that people have talked about, but can you just up and order 500 for yourself to arrive a week later at these prices? Well good luck to you if you can. And good luck finding someone who really delivers on some customer service like that. It's all well and good to see how a retailer does when things go well but to me the tell of the tape his how the respond when things go pear shape.
Enough yammering here's some photos. My scanner is frozen so I can't get any sharper images. I am a crap photographer though I'll try to take some photos in sunlight this weekend to give a better view of the stacks and all. The fuzziness is not the chips it's my inability to work in the digital camera domain. Sorry they're so dark.
That I'm clay oriented is obvious but I tried to really utilize the benefits and possibilities that ceramic printed cheques can bring. I'm well pleased with these.
Linear Mode
