How Poker Chips Are Made
21 September 2009How Poker Chips Are Made
You’ve seen poker chips, handled poker chips, won them with skill and cunning, and lost them due to horrible luck, but have you ever wondered, how are poker chips made? Before you invest in a set of clay poker chips yourself, take a look at this page to find out how they came to be.
Early Poker Chip History
Poker chips became common in the 1880’s. Before that people used a great variety of objects to gamble with. If you sat down at a poker table in the 1800’s, you were likely to see gold pieces, gold dust, coins, or chips made from ivory, bone or wood. Between 1880 and 1930 several companies began producing poker chips that were primarily made of clay, hence the classic “clay chip”. The clay poker chips quickly replaced the gold and wood poker chips which came before.
Poker Chips Today
Although people commonly refer to casino chips as “Clay chips”, poker chips have not been made exclusively of clay since they 1950’s. Clay by itself does not hold up well enough to the rigors of a casino. The materials that go into a modern clay poker chip are clay, sand, chalk, calcium carbonate, and other proprietary ingredients. Pieces of the chips are then cut out and different colored clay replaced to form the edge spots. Generally speaking, this is done to a stack of clay, which is then sliced to form individual chips. The chips then get a printed graphic, called an inlay, an go through a process called compression molding. The materials of the chips are sandwiched on top of each other, and then heated up to approximately 300 degrees Fahrenheit and pressed together with a die at 10,000 PSI to form an integral chip. The compression molding process seals and protects the chip. It prevents the inlay from peeling, and a small coating of plastic makes the chip easy to clean.
Ceramic chips were introduced as a cheaper alternative to clay chips in the 1980’s. They are formed by injected a resin into a mold, which is allowed to cool and harden. Some ceramic chips use a heavier resin to simulate the sound and feel of clay poker chips, others use a metal insert in the chip to give it the weight players expect. At the end of the day you are left with the modern poker chip, generally between 8.5 to 11.5 grams and 39 millimeters in diameter.
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