What will happen to vintage Paulson?

[PinataUT]

Paulson may move in the direction of 'true custom' at some point. Meantime, if they are indeed keeping the numbers in the 100,000 range that means they are trying to get more chips moved out through resellers. Doing 'one-offs' might let them get a bigger slice of the home market pie at some point, but they have yet to see if it is really worth the time and distraction...

Vintage stuff continues to go up in price... just my guess.

My $.04

[warewulf]

I understand that many will buy these chips with that mold, but why wouldn't they want to market towards everyone? From what I read on these boards the majority hate that mold. I understand that they dont want to use the actual TH&C mold, but COME ON! Make a mold that doesn't look so damn commercial! The whole point of getting chips is to have them seem authentic. I'd be happy if they just left the two TH&C marks on the sides, maybe put them on the top and bottom or something. Anything is better than having a brand name on a chip. Chipco handles this with the CI on all customs. I wouldn't mind a PC somewhere, just not the whole brand name TWICE in HUGE letters.

[Johnny5]

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Paulson may move in the direction of 'true custom' at some point.

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Do you know something I don't?

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Doing 'one-offs' might let them get a bigger slice of the home market pie at some point, but they have yet to see if it is really worth the time and distraction...

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They do have a lot of past experience with doing 'one-offs'. They were doing this for several retailers quite sucessfully and stopped when the merge with BG happened. At the time, they also had many 'fantasy' sets available (Gamblers Pleasure, Good Luck Club, Viva Las Vegas, Royal Flush, Various sports themes etc...)

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I'd be happy if they just left the two TH&C marks on the sides, maybe put them on the top and bottom or something. Anything is better than having a brand name on a chip. Chipco handles this with the CI on all customs. I wouldn't mind a PC somewhere, just not the whole brand name TWICE in HUGE letters.

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I agree, though Chipco doesn't put the 'CI' on its chips for advertising. They never required it on their custom chips until BG (and others?) started making VERY similar ceramic chips.

J5

[Slow Play Ray]

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...if the informed chip buyers represent such small numbers, why did the cost of Paulsons triple to over $2/chip during the past year and a half? Its called demand.

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Yes - and with Paulson chips in such low SUPPLY (the other half of the equation), it did not take all that much extra DEMAND (relatively speaking) to drive the prices up. I took Economics 101 too! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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What has GPI done to market these?

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I think this conversation got away from my original point. When I said "hats off to the marketing team..." I was referring to the PAULSON CHIPS mold and the Top Hat + Cane background on the inlay of those generic denomination chips. They are plastering their name and logo everywhere they possibly can on these chips to make themselves synonymous with poker chips to everyone who uses them - and that's just good (albeit highly annoying to folks like us) marketing.

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Oh - Foxwoods, you mean the LARGEST CASINO IN THE WORLD?? Sorry, but this casino does not represent the average casino.

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Yes, I am well aware that Foxwoods is the largest casino in the world - that is why I used only the poker room as an example. There are easily 100,000+ chips in use in that one room w/ about 100 tables at any given moment, which makes that number seem not so large for an average casino to order.

[PinataUT]

Do you know something I don't?

I suspect that the re-entry into the home market will demonstrate a desire for Paulson chips. As they capture (or help create) increased demand for higher end chips, they may start looking at how to get more out of that market. Just seems easier to stick to large orders at first, them move back into custom.

Maybe they'd work through some resellers like ChipCo works through some other folks for custom? Heck, I'd start putting together proposals for that kind of thing if I already did artwork / distribution for another chip manufacturer...

[Johnny5]

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] When was the demand for Paulsons ever so low that they require a demonstration of demand?? Are they completely blind? They had the high-end custom chip market completely cornered, and made a terrible decision to get out of that market at the exact time it was exploding! They are the ones who opened the door to Chipco & others. They even provided the exact model to Chipco who simply stepped in and filled the gap that Paulson left. The original custom Paulson retailers are still around, they haven't gone anywhere.

Paulson left these retailers hanging (I had a couple of long discussions with 2 retailers at the time) with zero notice, and unsympathetic response to any request to fill existing orders etc...

J5

[warewulf]

Yup, they sure missed the boat this year! There was a report on the news last week that Poker merchandise sales have quadrupled since last year. Paulson is just a tad late on these. Looks like they'll be in time for Valentine's day though...

[Accident]

I agree w/the statement about people who DONT appreciate nice chips. I have only had 3 out of about 20 who have said they really like using my chips over the crap everyone else has. I have the Oysters(chipco), the Egyptian's(chipco/Tenpercenter's) "Fabulous Las Vegas", and various real casino vegas chips by paulson and no one appreciates them.
Accident [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

[TenPercenter]

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I agree w/the statement about people who DONT appreciate nice chips. I have only had 3 out of about 20 who have said they really like using my chips over the crap everyone else has. I have the Oysters(chipco), the Egyptian's(chipco/Tenpercenter's) "Fabulous Las Vegas", and various real casino vegas chips by paulson and no one appreciates them.
Accident [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

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One of my friends is really "into" poker. He has has dice chips, hot stamped, and earnestly belives that they are the best thing in the world. I used my Egyptians for a tourney, and he looked one over and said, "Are these the full 11.5 grams?" As if 11.5g is the "official" weight that all gaming chips should be. I said, no, they're exactly 10 grams, just like casino chips. It didn't go any further than that, we both made our points.

The thing is, he's a smart guy. Just misinformed, or rather uninformed. All he knows is whatever that advertisement said that enticed him to buy the weighted plastic chips.

Ten

[Slow Play Ray]

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The thing is, he's a smart guy. Just misinformed, or rather uninformed. All he knows is whatever that advertisement said that enticed him to buy the weighted plastic chips.

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Bingo.