Quick backstory:
I got into poker in the winter of 2005. Our house at the time had a finished basement with 2 distinct areas: our son's playroom and my poker room. When I would have poker nights, we joked with everyone that we were at "Noah & Dave's Poker Room." For my birthday that March, Noah (5 at the time) wanted to make us a sign for the basement. My wife brought him to a craft store and he picked everything out on his own. She helped him with the spelling of some of the words, and this is what he gave me for my birthday:
Since then, we've moved into a house where I had a "poker room" for a little while, but because of our growing family, it got taken over by doll houses and stuff. Although demoted to our dining room, whenever there's a poker night, I've always found a place to hang his sign.
These days, Noah is more into girls and sports than anything else. I can tell he's a little embarrassed by the sign now, actually, because his last response when someone mentioned it to him was a very unenthusiastic, "I was 5." As his sappy father, though, I wanted to do something with the sign to acknowledge how much it means to me. Thanks to Johnny5 and ASM, I found a way to do that:
I noticed one day a while back that the Condado Beach chips had an emblem on the inlay that made me wonder if I could do something similar. J5 took that start and floored me. It was his idea to incorporate the color waves of Noah's sign and also his idea to include the extra outer ring to make it look even more like the original. His subtle but awesome additions showed me that it would work.
As for the individual chips:
$25 - One of the edgespots that I knew I'd definitely be getting from the beginning. The color of this chip was picked because of how much I liked the red and charcoal colors together.
$100 - This chip made the set for me. It was one of those moments when you mock up a combo and know right away that you've got it. It's only happened once for me and that was this chip. That Jim at ASM approved bright white for the inner spot only made it better.
$500 - I was seesawing about a white or black inlay until I decided on the $100 chip and knew I wanted the inlay to be black. To me, the inlay looks best on this chip. Butterscotch is such an awesome color. This chip may eventually become my favorite.
$1000 - This was my tough chip. I knew I wanted the $5000 chip to be a quarter pie, and I was having trouble getting to there from the 614 of the $500. I found this version of the spot combo while searching the site and I immediately liked the symmetry of the face. I figured the stacks would have a different pattern when next to the $500s too. I cheated by adding the retro lavender when I could have had all blue tones, but I just love these three colors together.
$5000 - the $5000 chip was always going to be a quarter pie.
Non-denom - Several people that I play poker with mentioned to me over the summer that they really liked the bounty tournaments, so I started thinking about adding a solid non-denom. DG peach and white were the frontrunners, and then one day I emailed Sallie to see if they would do a small number of bright white solids. They allowed it and I was able to add on.
Most of the set:
A huge, huge thanks to Johnny5 for taking my "hey, can we try..." and creating an inlay that keeps Noah's sign a part of our poker nights. I cannot recommend him enough.
Also, thanks to Sallie and Jim and everyone at ASM. It was a great experience dealing with them, and the quality of the chips is incredible.
Finally, here are a couple more pics, including some with my camera phone from last night's game:
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Something special to hold onto for sure, congrats.
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