Custom Poker Chips - Several Ways To Customize

By Author: Ron Sherrod
Total Articles: 13
Comment this article

If you've thought about a set of custom poker chips, want something that looks classy and has a real casino look and feel, and don't mind putting in a little effort on your part, you can have a first class looking set of totally custom poker chips at a very affordable price.
Most poker chips without denominations or no values printed on them can be customized. There are a few basic ways to customize poker chips. Different poker chips have different size areas which you can customize, from 7/8 up to 1.25. The most common size that most poker chips will work very well with , is a 15/16 inlay. This size gives you lots of different chips to choose from. Make sure your sizes match for best results.
1.You can have totally custom chips manufactured just for you. These are extremely high quality, very hard to counterfeit and by far the most expensive way to do it. These run somewhere around $1.00 or more per chip and take a few weeks to design. You start with a blank chip, then select your design in terms of edge spots and edge designs for a completely customized image of your own and whatever values you want in any quantity ...
... you want. These are truly comparable to casino poker chips and are usually made from ceramic material. The images and values are printed right into the chip. Unless you need to be concerned about unauthorized or counterfeit chips getting into your game, these can be a little pricy for the home or casual gaming market, but they offer a very high degree of security in terms of unauthorized chips.

2.There is another process called Hot Foil Stamped customized poker chips. These involve impressing a colored foil hot stamp image or value on the chip. These are usually rather simple, as unless you want to pay to have a special die designed for you, you are very restricted in what image and text style you can use without additional costs. These are one color imprints, usually consisting of something like a dollar value or your initials, just 3 or 4 letters on the chip. Even if you have a custom die designed for your special logo or image you are pretty much restricted to just one color. These are not terribly expensive but don't have the same visual quality, and are very simple in design as opposed to a custom designed 4 color inlay.

3.For the money and final quality look of your custom chips it's hard to beat a custom 4 color inlay, which is basically a sticker or label applied to the center of an existing stock poker chip. These can be done with almost any image and text in full color, adhered to the center of the chip and are as close as you'll get to option 1, the fully customized ceramic poker chip, and for a lot less money. These are great for home games, tournaments and casual games where concern about counterfeit chips is not an issue. There are two ways to do this. One is to have the custom inlay designed, printed and adhered on the chip for you. You can use your own image or take an idea or some favorite artwork and let the supplier help you design your chip inlay. There is sometimes a very nominal fee for their design work, but it's worth it. You can select the chip colors from a stock set of chips, have different values, or no values, and receive the finished product with inlays already printed and applied for you. These will usually run about 30 cents per chip, plus the cost of the chip. So if the chip costs 16 cents, plus the 30 cents for the inlay, including art fees you are probably in the $0.45 to $0.50 per chip range. The process can take 3 to 6 weeks to complete, depending upon design time.

4.There is another way to accomplish close to the same thing for a lot less money, and that involves using a stock poker chip without denominations and having a custom printed inlay designed and printed for you, then you adhere the inlay labels yourself. It's pretty easy to do, just takes a little time to aim and stick, but you can get a true 4 color custom poker chipsat a very affordable price. These are printed on a high quality, glossy stock that is designed especially for poker chips and will last a long time under normal usage. This process usually runs only about 12 cents per chip for both sides, and can be done in just a few days rather than weeks. You have complete flexibility as to what values you want if any, in any quantity of each value, and if you select the right chip to use you can have a truly unique fully customized poker chip that rivals the more expensive ways and can be a poker chip set you can truly be proud to use at your games.

Any poker chip without pre-printed denominations or images already on them can be used, giving you a large selection of color and design of chip.
If you don't already have a logo or image in mind, we can direct you to a site that has around 8 million extremely high quality images of almost anything you can dream of which can be re-designed to fit your chip. You can search the images by keyword, for instance poker , motorcycles, dragons, or just about anything else you can think of, and see thousands of designs involving your keyword which can be the raw artwork for your supplier's designers to help work into your own custom image. Using the same 16 cent chip, plus about 12 cents per chip for the inlays, you are in the $0.25 to $0.30 cents per chip total cost. You just provide the labor to adhere them and the finished chips look great for a lot less money.
There are many other uses for this type of Custom Poker Chips besides just poker. They make great and inexpensive entry gifts or mementos for tournaments. They can be used by retail stores, clubs and restaurants as very novel and memorable comeback coupons. Some clever business people even use custom poker chips as a business card that won't end up in the trash. The options are almost endless.

Shown below are the printed inlays only that we designed from a dragon image from the idea image site mentioned above. These were designed to have an Asian theme and a dragon image for use in a mah jong game, but it gives you an idea of the complexity and use of color available. These were put on the Crown & Dice style chip, which has a 3 color edge spot to a matching chip color and look terrific. These cost less than 30 cents per chip for images on both sides in a quantity of 500, including the poker chip.

Blog url:-

http://acesfullrds.wordpress.com/

Author Bio: Ron of PokerUpShop, an online Poker Store offering a huge selection of Poker Chips and Custom Poker Chips at very affordable prices. PokerUpShop also offers free US shipping on all orders over $49.