[cormie]

Hi,
I am looking to get my company logo on some chips. I will be looking to lend chips to tournament organisers in Ireland so I will need enough chips to cater for about 500 people, this figure may be spread out over various tournaments/venues.

I will be looking for decent chips. I have seen chips with horses heads on them etc, but I think it would be better to have a poker theme or a simple design. Perhaps the suited look with the Clubs/Spades/Diamonds/Hearts and the edge spots.

I think for the purpose I want them for, it would make sense to put denominations on them, not $ or €, just 1/2/5/10/25/50/100/200/500/1,000/5,000 perhaps.


What is recommended for chip denominations, both colour and amount?

What is the best solution to get my company logo on the chips?

What amount of chips will I need to cater for about 500 people at any given time? Remember, this will not be just one tournament so chip denominations should be taken into account.

If going with labels, what is the best option to take? I have searched the forums and have seen some bad labeling. Is there a decided/agreed upon best solution?

I will want to be as economic as possible, if getting custom chips is only marginally dearer than labeling, I would prefer to go with the custom option.

Any feedback appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

[Coleman]

500 players?
50 tables operating simultaneously playing tournaments?
Is it all one tourney, which spins off side games/tourneys?
Off the top of my head, you're going to need 15,000 chips minimum.
This likely means that you won't be buying custom clays or chipcos.
What's your budget?
What are the games?
We'll require more info before solving all of your problems.

[cormie]

Hi,
thank you for the reply. You see, I own www.poker.ie, and we have an event directory and we get various people setting up various tournaments. I would like to encourage people to set up tournaments so I would like to provide them with the free rental of poker chips. I would say 500 would be the maximum amount of players at any given time in need of chips. This could be 5 tournaments with 100 players each, it could be 10 with 50 players each etc.

My budget would be about $3 per person perhaps? I'm not too sure if that would suffice.

Any further feedback appreciated.

[Coleman]

OK, that's about 10 cents per chip. I've seen plenty of chips sell for half that price or even less.
In the quantites you have described, you should certainly be able to find a great price.
Stickers can be made for less than 5 cents per chip (both sides), but applying 30,000 stickers is going to be a real problem.
Hotstamped chips will cost a bit more.
I think a custom inlay is well out of your price range here.

The size of your order is large enough to allow you to deal directly with a manufacturer, bypassing the retailer.
You'll probably find the manufacturer more cooperative if you also plan to sell sets from your website.
Do you know anyone who does any business in China?
I'd be tempted to go directly to the source here.
Provide logo art and mockups, and see if you can find a taker for your $1500.
You'll spend 3-4 times that amount if you go through conventional channels.

[cormie]

I have a few samples of hotstamped chips and I don't really like the finish.

I do not know anyone who does any business in China unfortunately, is this where most chips are manufactured? Do you know of any manufacturers yourself?

I have my company logo available as a vector to be resized by printers so this shouldn't be a problem.

Do you reckon there is a manufacturer who would be able to do a few thousand decent quality chips with my logo for about $1,500 shipped to Ireland?

I see a seller on Ebay.ie (the Irish outlet of Ebay) who is selling a set of 500 11.5gm chips with 2 decks of cards and an alluminium case (the usual set you see) with a card shuffler for €29, which is less than $40. so that works out at about 6c a chip, and he must still be making profit on this. The chips look quite decent too. Click here to have a look. He was posting on my site telling about his deals and I have asked him to email me just now so hopefully he can point me in the direction of some contacts.

Have you any idea what kind of denominations I should use? How many chips should I expect to get for each player and what denominations etc?

Just how cheap do you think I would be able to get them from the manufacturer?

Thank you.[/url]

[Coleman]

5 euro cents per chip plus 2 more cents delivered is a very common price point for the Dice chip with case.

The Dice chip is very common design, and not very appealing.
Did you see his "chrome" chips?
http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...sPageName=WDVW
Those boogers come 10 cents delivered, and they have graphics.
I'd ask him if a custom order is possible.
You may be able to trade ad space on your site to offset some of the cost with this fellow!

Here's another graphic chip he carries. (8 cents delivered)
http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...sPageName=WDVW

You have a possible relationship with him already, and he certainly knows more about these chips than I do.
Try to work out a partnership with him. It's a great place to start.
Your order may be large, but it's too small to capture the interest of the manufacturers alone.

For a 100 man tournament, my absolute minimum chip requirements would be the following:

800 green $25
900 black $100
400 purple $500
100 orange $1000
60 $5000 (blue, brown or gray)

Total 2260 chips. A few extras should be added for the dealers' change racks. This array will support a T3000, and can be completely colored in by the $5000 chips. This is bare bones!
For 5 simultaneous tourneys, this means 11300 chips plus any extras you can afford. Starting stacks are 8 green, 8 black and 4 purple-- which will fit beautifully in a chiprack. The oranges will color out the blacks and greens. When you color out the greens, you'll need to use 10 oranges as well as the remaining 100 blacks. Like I said, this is bare bones.

I'm glad to see you have hosted events in Cork. I have quite a lot of family in the county.

[cormie]

Hi again,
Thank you for you continued support. If things don't work out with him, do you know what the best solution for me would be otherwise? Really, all I want is the cheapest and best solution to have enough chips for the amount of people (500) and to have my logo on one side and the denomination on the other. As long as the chips last I will be happy, that means that the sticker, or whatever logo option I go for, will last and that it wont be able to be peeled off by fidgity tournament players. I know applying the stickers myself would seem like an awful job, but if it's the best solution then I really have no problem doing it.

Do you recommend stickers over hotstamping? I really don't like the look of hotstamping, but which will last longer?

Also, regarding the chip distribution in tournaments, you suggest each player starts with 1,200 worth of chips, the small blind of stage 1 being the smallest amount, say 25, and the big blind would probably be 50. This is only 24 times the big blind, they usually recommend you start with at least 100 times the big blind. What do you reckon the best option to go for would be? Would this mean the tournaments would drag on way too long?

Thank you for the comment, we don't actually run the tournaments ourselves, we promote them on our site for free, and we will be renting ships to organisers for free too, so this whole venture is non profit orientated, the purpose is to get our name out to all the players of said tournaments. Hopefully it will pay off in the end

[disqman]

Normally, hotstamping a logo will run around $.08 to $.1 per chip in addition to the chip cost, and +/- $100 for the die cut. I caution about buying chips on Ebay, some of what I have seen is very poor quality. If you can get them in China, do so, you will save a bunch of money. The downside to that is, many times you should be more careful with manufacturers in China then sellers on Ebay! Usually for that quantity of chip, you have some bargaining room.

If you want to do color logos, they are much more costly in terms of cash, and time to affix them to the chip. To keep these under a budget you might consider nixing the logo, and going with a striped dice or suited 11.5g chip, or faux clays perhaps. Actually, the new 10g sopranos are relatively cheap too.

Best of luck to you.

[cormie]

Thanks for your input.

What exactly do you mean by "nixing" the logo? The logo does not actually need colour, it would only be black and white.



That is the logo, The blue background is not part of it, that is just a background. The logo itself can be changed colour to suit the best style. Maybe black on a white background would look good for the chips.

Where exactly can I get the printing done? I would like the job to be done well. Also, is there any solution you can paste over the chip (once the logo is applied) with so it is more durable or are there labels out there that have a good enough stick so as they wont peel off, even with mild abuse.

If I was to get say 15,000 11.5gm suited chips for say $800

How much would I be looking to spend on 30,000 labels of good durable quality?

Thanks for the support.

[disqman]

15,000 chips for $800 will be difficult......at least i haven't seen it. Then there is the printing. Even at a nickel a chip to print logos, it will be costly.

It was just a suggestion, but you will be able to procure the right number of chips and remain under a budget with just plain chips. Not as striking, but effective none the less.

For more information on it here is a link:

http://www.pokerchipreviews.com/productreviews.html

Personal poker chips is toward the bottom.