Poker chips and gaming supplies are no longer a specialty market. It used to be there were just a handful of places where you could get a decent set of poker chips. Those days are over. While this may seem like good news, it also creates a problem: a glut of low
priced, low quality poker chips.
They appear to be high quality from the descriptions and photos,
but once you receive your shipment, you find out otherwise. This article will quickly explain where poker chips
are made and how to make sure you're buying quality poker chips.
As someone who has been in the import/export business for years (as well as a poker nut), I can tell you that
95% of the poker chips sold in this country are imported from Asian countries, specifically China.
This in itself is not bad. However, the problem lies in the fact that many
Chinese factories do not understand what Americans expect in terms of quality. So they manufacture low cost, low quality poker chips.
Are there any quality poker chips coming out of China?
The answer is yes. However, these factories are producing poker chips under the
supervision and quality control of someone who knows the US market, in most cases Americans.
For instance, I know one US importer who creates a poker chip design and gets a US trademark on it. He then hires a Chinese factory to produce the poker chips, and sends his two sons over to China to these factories to make sure what is coming out is
acceptable US quality.
This is not the case for many of the poker chips you see online. Many Chinese factories will send a few samples of their poker chips to an unwitting US online
poker retailer. They make sure the samples look good, but after the retailer places a large order, what they get are discolored, uneven
molded poker chips. And as you might imagine, these Chinese factories do not have a return policy, so the low quality poker chips get sold to you.
Many of these Chinese factories are just
outright criminal as well. They will take a US trademarked poker chip design, copy it,
and then try to sell it to US online poker chip retailers. What the retailer doesn’t know is that they are buying poker chips that infringe on a US trademark.
While it’s very difficult to go after the factory in China, US customs will concentrate on seizing the goods as they
enter the country. Thus the US online retailer takes the loss.
The key is identifying the quality poker chips and finding the retailer that supplies them. Check out the
poker supplier
reviews page, where I help identify the good and bad retailers of poker chips.
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