These notes are mostly by Tim.

Taking Orders

Chip sales have been handled by all sorts of means in the past.

In 2025, We sold chips with a Google form and the promise of Venmo payments. A Google Form makes a crappy shopping cart experience. It is easy to set up. However, several people sent the wrong amount of money in.

In 2026, we had Claude put together a form. On the whole, this worked better than the Google Sheet – there were fewer errors. The form was rigged up to post to a Google Sheet, which was then fed into the actual order. The form had some usability mistakes. Make sure an “address” form has city/state/zip fields. People expect these, and since he got cute and made this a <textarea>, some folks left out their city. Also, make sure the “pay now” information is on the submission confirmation.

Whoever collects the money needs to reconcile the amounts posted to the spreadsheet. In 2025, this didn’t happen.

In 2026, our order form sent email to people who ordered chips. This frequently hit the spam folder. Some folks waited to get this email in order to send money.

Being able to take credit cards would be a really good idea.

Expected Sales

Historically, we tend to sell about 1/3 as many chipsets as main event entrants. In 2025, we did a little better than that, about 40%, but the main event is smaller than it used to be.

“Bulk” sales are very hit-and-miss. In the 2025 batch, two winners bought additional chips. Two winners did not. No one outside the winners bought bulk chips.

Budget

BCC chips historically made a small profit. The accumulated carry-forward profit doesn’t do the community any good. A small buffer and/or working capital would be enough in Tim’s opinion.

It is very beneficial for the BCC if the chip designer happens to have Illustrator, or access to a stock image service. These things cost money.

Chip costs have increased. While the chips are printed in the US, they likely involve tariffed materials.

I suggest making a proper budget and using that to set the chip set price. The number of chips sold is somewhat predictable.

Pricing

Check out the 1993 announcement.

In general, the markup on sample sets is intuitively kind of a lot. We marked the chips up about 150% after a lot of waffling. We had a budget and did some careful calculations, then at the last minute Tim bumped it up to make it mostly a round $20 per sample set. We turned a modest profit.

In 2026, we accidentally made money. Our markup was too high, we sold through some “paid for” old stock, and our sales were a little better than 2025.

Accessories

Chip sets have always come with a case. In 2025, we bought them from BRPro.

The BCC has historically provided a framed set of chips as a trophy. Games & Frames can cut their 20-chip frame to a 16-chip frame, the usual size of a BARGE chip set. This worked well for 2025.