The interest in poker has grown rapidly over the last few years and many of you are buying poker supplies for the first time. This introduction will help you decide what kind of poker chips best fit your needs.Poker chips are typically divided into three different categories: plastic, composite, and clay composite. All are available at PokerShopping.com – with a lowest price guarantee.
Plastic Chips
Plastic chips are made up entirely of plastic. Our plastic chips weigh 5 grams each but sometimes you can find plastic chips of up to 7 grams. The advantage to buying plastic chips is that they are very inexpensive. Unfortunately they are easily damaged and they lack the look and weight of more expensive poker chips. A good idea might be to initially purchase plastic chips if you are on a tight budget. But if you decide to get serious about having home games you should invest in a set of quality composite or clay composite chips.
Our Plastic Chips
Composite Chips
Composite chips can consist of different materials, but usually the main material is a high impact strength plastic known as ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene). Our 11.5 gram composite chip is made of a top quality composite resin, a tooth-colored plastic mixture filled with glass (ABS). A small piece of metal is inserted into our 11.5 gram chip to add weight and to enable hot stamping.
Price is the number one advantage to using composite chips. Thanks to lower raw material costs and less labor costs, composite chips are always going to be less expensive than clay composite chips. Also, because ABS is harder than clay, designs on composite chips are sharper and more detailed than on its clay counterparts. Composite chips are also more durable and have a longer lifespan than clay composite chips. However, composite chips do not stack as well as clay chips (because of a more slippery surface) and some players do not like the pinging sound composite chips make when dropped against each other.
Our Composite Chips
Clay Composite Chips
Clay composite chips is the top choice for most discerning poker players. One advantage to using clay composite chips is better stacking ability. The dull texture of clay chips makes them easier to stack than their composite (ABS) counterparts that have a slicker surface. Some players also appreciate the thud sound that clay chips make. Then there is the nostalgic feeling of playing with the same material that original poker chips were made of. Many players also choose clay chips because it is the chip of choice at casinos around the world.
There are some disadvantages associated with clay chips. Clay chips are more expensive than composite chips. Also, they are less durable than composite chips and are also relatively fragile (they chip easily). One other thing to take into consideration is that the design on clay chips can vary a little from chip to chip. Clay has a tendency to spread out the color. However, off color should never be more than a couple of percent on our chips.
Please note that there is no such thing as 100 percent pure clay poker chips. A pure clay chip would be so weak that you would be able to easily break it in half with your fingers.
Our clay composite poker chips are made of 7 percent clay and 93 percent ABS plastic. This can be compared to casino chips which usually consist of about 15 percent clay. The lower percentage in clay allows for a more durable clay chip at a lower price, but with the same clay feeling. Clay costs many times more than ABS and a chip with 15 percent clay would be much more expensive. Our 13.5 gram composite clay chips are inserted with a small piece of metal to add weight and enable hot stamping. Our 9 gram clay chips are not inserted with any metal and are more expensive than our 13.5 gram ones because they contain more pure clay. The more clay in a chip, the more you will pay for a set of poker chips.
Our Clay Composite Chips
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