About Classic Poker Chips
One craft, carried for over a century.
Classic Poker Chips LLC continues the same high-quality, hand-crafted real clay poker chips that have been made in Maine for more than 100 years — now from our new factory in Woodinville, Washington. The owner is Mike Amirault.
The Full History
From billiard balls to poker chips.
Alonzo Burt Sr. — whose family held billiard-ball patents at Albany's famous works before striking out on their own — founds the Portland Billiard Ball Company in Portland, Maine, making patented billiard balls plus checkers, dominoes, tally balls, and bowling balls.
The company begins manufacturing poker chips alongside billiard balls — simple designs in clay-like composition and an early plastic called Plaskon, sold as “Breaknot”.
Renamed the Burt Company, the firm develops the metal die-cut chip — foil designs applied to chips become its signature product before the war. Within a few years, clay chips as we know them are developed and supplied to wholesalers for hot-stamping.
Chip production is limited as the company turns to government contracts — primarily manufacturing ammo cans.
Burt chips are on the tables when Bugsy Siegel opens the Flamingo — the casino that starts Las Vegas. Burt then purchases United States Playing Card's chip-making equipment, eliminating its main competitor, and goes on to press virtually every chip used in the casinos from 1947 to 1975. The late '40s bring printed-center chips and the first colored edge spots.
Burt introduces the first multi-colored edge spots and the first house mold, at the Golden Nugget. The Flamingo puts its new Champagne Tower on its roulette chips; Wilbur Clark and Benny Binion put their own faces on theirs. The chips pressed here for the casinos of the '50s and '60s remain the most valuable ever made to collectors.
Jim Blanchard acquires the Burt Company's assets, renames it Atlantic Standard Molding, and keeps making chips in Portland, Maine for 24 more years, retiring in 2012.
Chip enthusiasts David Spragg and David Sarles purchase the assets, persuade Jim out of retirement, and set up a new factory near the original location. Classic Poker Chips launches in March 2014.
David and David retire; CPC is sold to repeat customer Mike Amirault.
The entire factory — presses, molds, and all — moves from Maine to Woodinville, Washington. Same equipment, same clay, next chapter.
Someone from the 1920s could walk up to any one of our machines and take over with a five-minute prep. That's how unchanged the process is.— Jim Blanchard, who ran these presses for 24 years
CPC Bulletin
The latest from the factory.
June 2026. The Woodinville, WA factory is up and running — we are operational and taking orders. Thank you for your patience through the move; this next chapter of CPC is officially underway. — Mike
Stock sets: temporarily out of stock while we work through the current backlog of orders. They'll return to the store as soon as the backlog is cleared.
Community
Join the conversation on Poker Chip Forum.
Most of our customers are members of Poker Chip Forum, and CPC has its own section there: finished sets, works in progress, design feedback, group buys, and honest answers from people who own our chips. It’s the best place to see what’s possible before you order, and to show off your set when it arrives.
Why It Matters
The last of the real thing.
We are the only remaining manufacturer in the world offering genuine compression-molded clay chips to the retail market. The molds exist only at our factory; the process is a closely guarded secret; and every chip is still made by hand, the way it was when the Golden Nugget got its first house mold.
Whether you're a casino or an individual planning a home game for the ages, you're ordering from the same works that has been pressing chips since 1912.
