Now more than ever, cheap copies of quality poker chips are beginning to flood the market. These chips are poorly manufactured, and many times the picture shown is not an accurate representation of what you are getting. 

With legitimate poker chip manufacturers, before the production process begins on a chip, the chip design is registered with the U.S. copyright office, and a copyright Certificate of Registration is issued for the design. 

If a particular style of chip becomes a hot seller, small overseas factories, mainly in China, will begin to illegally produce low quality imitations of the copyrighted chip. It’s very difficult to go after the factories doing the illegal productions, but it’s much easier to take legal action against the U.S retailers of these chips. At this time, there are legal actions being taken against fake chip retailers.

So How Does Buying A Fake Chip Affect You? 

 As mentioned above, these chips are produced using lower grade materials and with very little quality control. Here are a list of problems with counterfeit chips: 

·        Easily scratch and nick after just a few uses due to production using recycled, low grade plastics. 

·        Thickness not consistent. Put two stacks of 20 chips next to each other, and they won’t be the same height. Not a big deal until you can only fit 19 chips into a chip rack that is supposed to hold 20 chips. 

·        Printing scuffs and wears down easily. Counterfeit chips use low quality inks printed on low grade plastics. Throw in lack of craftsmanship, and you have a poker chip that is bound to give you problems. 

·        Many times the picture you see of a counterfeit chip does not reflect its quality. The photo will be computer generated or touched up to make it appear high quality. If a chip looks too perfect, it probably is. Note this in the fake Tab Style Royal Flush Chip shown below.  

Pokerchiplounge.com will periodically issue Counterfeit Chip Alerts, like the ones shown below. We hope that this will help keep you informed of which poker chip styles are being counterfeited and how to identify them.

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