Anyone Interested In Hot Stamped Poker Chips

May 23, 2005

I have been bouncing this idea around for a while and I thought I would see if anyone else would like to start this with me.

I have been trying to come up with a personalized, collectible item for me and others to leave at caches.

I have worked out a deal with a poker chip company that will hot stamp the geocaching logo (the one with the four squares) in gold foil on one side of a poker chip. My thought is that cachers could then purchase the round labels available just about anywhere and customize the back of the chip with the cacher's name and anything else they wanted to include.

The gold hot stamping on these chips look great (we had some done for a local hockey team) and I think this would make a great collectible item.

The cost would be about .22 per chip plus shipping. I do not plan on making a penny off of these, but would simply buy them in batches of 300 or 500, divide up the cost, and sell them to people for my exact cost. Groundspeak has agreed to let me use the logo for this purpose, provided I do not make any money off of it.

So, would anyone be interested in this? It will cost me about $45.00 to have the die made to stamp the chips, so I don't want to jump in if I'm the only one who thinks this would be a good idea.

May 23, 2005

Well that does sound very interesting. I think that would be a nice thing to leave at a cache. Let me know what you end up doing?

1.5k · May 23, 2005

Sounds interesting...do you have links to examples of the chips?

May 23, 2005

Are these clay or plastic? Does anyone know how well the clay chips hold up in thru the summer/winter?

May 23, 2005

I think I could spring for about 250 of them depending on what they look like. It has already been asked but I'll ask again anyway, do you have a link to some examples?

May 23, 2005

This website has a few examples of the hot stamped chips from this company:

Poker Chips

If anyone is really interested in this, I have some actual sample chips that the company sent me when we ordered them for the hockey team. I would be glad to send you out a sample so you can see what the hot stamping actually looks like. You can send me a PM with your address if you would like one.

I don't mean to come across as an advertisement for this company - but they produced top quality chips for us before and were great to work with. They are very picky with their inspections and pull any that are slightly off center, not stamped just right, etc.

It would probabably be best if we did all the same style (i.e. suited, dice, etc.) but we could order different colors in blocks of 25 as well. One more way to personalize your chip would be to pick your favorite color.

May 23, 2005

Are these clay or plastic? Does anyone know how well the clay chips hold up in thru the summer/winter?

These are the 11.5 gram "clay composite" chips that you see all over the place. I have no idea how they would hold up in a cache, but I can't see any reason they should break down. Plus, my hope is that these will become sought after and people will be grabbing them out of caches to add to their collection.

May 23, 2005

One thing I should mention is that shipping can be quite a bit on these as they are not light weight plastic chips. You drop a 500 chip case of these on your foot and you are going to be seriously hurting!

I will check with the company and see if they would be willing to ship larger orders (say anything over 100) directly to you, rather than paying to ship them to me and then me ship them to you.

May 23, 2005

Okay,

I will be in for 250. I'm not too concerned with color or the style. Let me know if this takes off.

7.2k · May 23, 2005

Bear in mind that for what you are doing you may need permission from Groundspeak to make sure you are using the logo correctly. You cannot sell these to other geocachers and make a profit without permission. Doing the logo in gold is another issue that may need to be addressed.

http://www.geocaching.com/about/logousage.aspx

May 23, 2005

Bear in mind that for what you are doing you may need permission from Groundspeak to make sure you are using the logo correctly. You cannot sell these to other geocachers and make a profit without permission. Doing the logo in gold is another issue that may need to be addressed.

http://www.geocaching.com/about/logousage.aspx

I appreciate that. I have already checked with Groundspeak to get approval of this. They want to approve the artwork, but have generally agreed to let me do this as long as I do not make any money off of it.

7.2k · May 23, 2005

Outstanding.

I just did not want to see you get blind-sided.

1.1k · May 23, 2005

Well MtnMan voiced my concern so now what is the cost????

cheers

May 23, 2005

All in

I mean I'm interested.

Please PM me when ready to start shipping.

Lefty

May 23, 2005

Well MtnMan voiced my concern so now what is the cost????
cheers

The cost of the chips are .22 each (if we get a large enough order, we may be able to get them a little bit cheaper, but probably not too much). As I stated earlier, shipping on these is not real cheap as they weigh about 2.5 pounds per 100. I know it will cost about $25 to have them shipped to me (which probably includes a little bit of handling charges), so a safe guess would be that it will cost about $10 per 100 for shipping.

So, if you order 100, you would be looking somewhere in the neighborhood of $32.00.

Now, that would not include the labels for the back side of the chip. However, you can get 1000 blank labels on ebay for around $10 and print them yourself or have them professionally made for pretty cheap too.

I think that the chips with shipping and custom made labels would probably end up running you less than .35 - .40 a piece. I could do orders as small as 25 if someone wanted them.

I feel like I have been caught with my pants down a little bit. I do not have everything looked down yet as I was kind of wanting to see what the level of interest would be before I started doing too much leg work. However, it looks like there is quite a bit of interest, so I'll try to get everything nailed down a little more.

May 23, 2005

Kevgraub,

Are you going to own the die, or will it be made public. For example, I order 250 chips from you, then I give them all out, could I go directly to the manufacturer to get more, could I have another die made for the other side so that I have the Geocaching logo on one side and my own signature logo on the other side instead of putting on stickers? I'm not trying to step on any toes here just looking at more possibilites for this cool idea of yours.

May 23, 2005

Kevgraub,
Are you going to own the die, or will it be made public. For example, I order 250 chips from you, then I give them all out, could I go directly to the manufacturer to get more, could I have another die made for the other side so that I have the Geocaching logo on one side and my own signature logo on the other side instead of putting on stickers? I'm not trying to step on any toes here just looking at more possibilites for this cool idea of yours.

I suppose technically I would own the die, but since I'm not making anything off of these I would have no problem with you going directly to the manufacturer. The only thing I am not sure about is the fact that Groundspeak would may have to sign off on that.

My thought on my getting them and then reselling them at cost was for people that want to get smaller orders so that I could order in bulk to keep the cost down.

I'm pretty certain the company would have no problems with you ordering your chips with both sides stamped. The dies cost about $45 to have made (one time fee) and then it is about 10-20 cents per chip extra to have them stamped on the other side. I'll check into this and see. If you are only buying 100 or so, it may not be worth it to have the second die made. However, if you are looking at buying a bunch of these it may be a fun idea. The chips we had made for the hockey team had the team logo on one side and the team name on the other.

May 24, 2005

I have had some people ask me about the labels for the back side of the chip. I found a company that will make waterproof, color laser printed labels for:

$7/100 for under 500 labels

$6/100 for 500 to 1000 labels

$5/100 for 1000 or more labels

S/H is $6 for 2-3 day priority mail

Check out Cutsomize-It for some examples and the company's e-mail address.

There are lots of other companies out there too, just do a search for poker chip labels and you will find tons of options. This is the first one I found that offers a vinyl, waterproof label and I thought the price was pretty good.

I sent him a background picture and some text for what I was thinking about and it looked great. He can do anything you want on it. I plan on using some sort of Kansas type background on the chip. It will have "Kevgraub" in larger type in the center of the chip with "Topeka, KS" right below that a little smaller. Along the bottom of the chip (following the curve of the chip) it will say "www.geocaching.com"

I plan on getting the first set of these chips ordered later this week if at all possible. I will let everyone know when they are available. I don't want to get stuck with too many extras, so I will probably order something like 500-700 right now and sell them in groups of 50 or 100. It only takes about a week to get more in.

2.7k · May 24, 2005

Customize-It has the longest lasing labels I can buy? :blink:

This sounds pretty cool actually. Did you have a particular color in mind for the chips?

EDIT: I like teh Tangiers chip, actually - it doesn't have dice on them at all.

Edited May 24, 2005 by New England n00b

May 24, 2005

I'd be in for at least 100. Are you getting different colors? I might want to actually play poker with some of mine... I sent a PM to you, check your inbox.

May 24, 2005

Ok guys, here are the more specific specifics:

I have to backtrack a little on the .22 per chip plus shipping. I did not realize that did not include the original die charge. Fortunately, shipping is a little less than I had planned, so it comes out pretty close.

I am going to order 500 chips. The initial order will cost me $129.99 plus $15 shipping. That works out to .29 per chip shipped to me.

What I plan on doing is selling these in blocks of 50 chips for $14.50 plus actual shipping cost to you (if you are in the Topeka, KS area anytime, I would be glad to arrange for pickup so you don't have to pay for shipping). I'm going to ask that everyone keep their initial order down to 50 so we can get some of these spread around out there. Once you get them, if you like the chips and want more let me know and I'll be glad to get some more ordered and on the way.

The chips are the 11.5 gram clay composite chips. The company has a style of chip that has a slightly recessed circle to place a label in. This should protect the label from both wear and peeling, which can be a problem with some other chips. These are striped chips (they have four sets of two stripes on the side), not suited or dice.

I am going to order 100 white with blue stripes; 150 red with white stripes, 150 black with white stripes; and 100 white with green stripes.

I decided to go with the striped chips to protect the labels more, but I can order both suited and dice chips if you would prefer. I probably won't do that this first order, but I can do it for the next order.

I have decided to ask everyone to include some basic information on the labels for their chips, to bring some level of uniformity to these. I say design them however you want, but please include (1) your geocaching.com screen name; (2) city and state; and (3) "www.geocaching.com" If you want to put something else on there like your e-mail, shoe size, or whatever, go for it.

Everyone is on their own for labels, but I will help anyone find them if they need it. Probably best way to find some is do a search for poker chip labels on the net. You should find blank labels and custom labels pretty easily.

Please send me an e-mail or instant message telling me how many of each color you want. I plan on having people pay for these either by check or money order (paypal is probably an option too, I have just never received money that way so I'm not sure exactly how it works).

May 27, 2005

PM'd you about this. You can use priority flat rate shipping envelopes or boxes regardless of weight and not pay more than $7.70 each. Free packaging too.

I would like 100 if you have enough. :lol:

May 27, 2005

email sent check will be in the mail :lol:

May 27, 2005

ok now it looks as if you are selling them to geocachers

as stated on the geocaching.com page These items may not, under any circumstance, be sold. is the making and shipping

the $14.50??

and

maybe you need to have geocaching.com

talk to customize-it about selling them with out you or geocaching.com knowing about it

there are some dealers that go off and sell things after modding them

here say

i take the geocaching logo and put my name on the bottom of it

change the color of it turn it on its side what ever and then resell it

but who holds the copyright on it? geocaching.com since it is there logo after all

but hey look at it this way if it does turn out like that geocaching can do court action law suit and get some $$$ for more fast servers so the site can keep getting bigger and bigger and get a truck to go out a promote caching a cross the land and all kinds of stuff :lol:

May 27, 2005

ok now it looks as if you are selling them to geocachers
as stated on the geocaching.com page These items may not, under any circumstance, be sold. is the making and shipping

the $14.50??

and

maybe you need to have geocaching.com

talk to customize-it about selling them with out you or geocaching.com knowing about it

there are some dealers that go off and sell things after modding them

here say

i take the geocaching logo and put my name on the bottom of it

change the color of it turn it on its side what ever and then resell it

but who holds the copyright on it? geocaching.com since it is there logo after all

but hey look at it this way if it does turn out like that geocaching can do court action law suit and get some $$$ for more fast servers so the site can keep getting bigger and bigger and get a truck to go out a promote caching a cross the land and all kinds of stuff

Yes, I am selling them to other geocachers. The web page says they may not be sold, without the express permission of Groundspeak. As I said before, I approached Groundspeak about this before I ever started looking into it and they gave me permission to do exactly what I am doing as long as I did not do it for a profit. The total cost of the chips is $144.99 with shipping. If I sell all 500 at the $14.50/50 price, I will recoup $145.00 plus the actual cost of shipping them to the other geocachers. If Groundspeak wants to sue me because I made $0.01 off of this when I told them I would not do it for a profit - so be it.

The company that is making the chips knows that the logo is protected. They are professionals who deal with trademarks all the time. You are right, there is no way of me knowing if they will print extra chips and sell them without my knowledge or Groundspeak's knowledge. But what would stop them from doing that anyway? If they want to violate Groundspeak's intellectual property rights, they can do it regardless of whether I do this or not.

May 27, 2005

hey a $1.45 is not that bad

1.4k · May 30, 2005

I found this web page while cruising for clay poker chips. I stumbled across it. Oh, about the third and fourth picture.

Edited May 30, 2005 by zoltig

2.7k · May 30, 2005

If Groundspeak wants to sue me because I made $0.01 off of this when I told them I would not do it for a profit - so be it.

You have to pay your emplyees (you) for their time and effort don't you? Although if I worked for you I'd be really upset I would be getting only 1 cent for all my work. After taxes my total paycheck would be $0.00. Remind me never to work for you!!!

June 4, 2005

i'm definitely interested. i'd like to see how the final product looks with the label applied.

June 5, 2005

I found this web page while cruising for clay poker chips. I stumbled across it. Oh, about the third and fourth picture.

Cool, I saw two different designs for geocaching

June 8, 2005

I'm interested also, have been looking for some type of signature item.

June 8, 2005

I was in Vegas last January, and I found chips just like this in a gift shop for a rediculous price - something like 25c each! You could choose from a number of dollar values on the chips.

The chips I bought to use for trade items ($100/black) were very nice. I was surprised later when I found that a 'fridge magnet stuck to them. The center is metal! I'm not sure what the edge is made from, but they look exactly like the ones in the link. I'll scan one and post it here for you to see when I get home.

(I found a magnet would stick to the edge of the chip, as well).

Edited June 9, 2005 by maps 'n motorcycles

June 8, 2005

What's the status on this?

June 9, 2005

Here are the photos of the chip I picked up:

one side

and the other side

June 10, 2005

I have been using labeled poker chips as a signiture item for some time now, the first ones began to show up about two years ago and I have collected several of them. The ones from poker.com are silk-screened and cost about $1.25 each with a minimum order of 300. Mine have waterproof vinal labels that I get custom laser printed from a internet vendor, 500 each of two designs for $45.00. I use 13 gram casino chips that can also be purchased over the internet for about $25.00 per 100. These are the type of chip that has a steel center. Your idea of a gold hot stamp sounds interesting, I'd like to see one. I'll send you one of mine if you send me one of yours.

June 29, 2005

Are there any pictures of these chips? I'd like to see one before I end up buying.

hey marlin01,

I just recently picked up one of your signature chips in wappingers falls, NY

Edited June 29, 2005 by WxGuesser

June 29, 2005

Anything new on this topic?

I am also interested.....put me down for 50 or 100 if possible. I'll pay whatever shipping cost is to Canada.

Paul

Edited June 29, 2005 by Uniacke Raiders

June 29, 2005

I'm interested in 100 also.

1.3k · June 29, 2005

Can you tell me what the diameter of the center recess is?

I'm already doing something similar with cheap plastic chips found in about any store. It would be sweet if I could upgrade my chips and keep using the artwork and labels I already have set up.

July 9, 2005

"Bump" ...

What happened to this thread ?

1.2k · July 9, 2005

"Bump" ...

What happened to this thread ?

people stopped posting to it.

Anyone Interested In Hot Stamped Poker Chips

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