50 Shades of….Nah, Just a Fun Box of Polychromatic Polymers

 After getting our eight dollars worth from the Chinese Buffet, Jeff, fellow table tennis player and bargain hunter extraodinaire, accompanied me next door. We strolled into Golden Bins for some ‘binster’ diving. Our third compadre Mike elected not to comb through these Amazon returns, or should I say unreturned items. Normally stir-frying our way through the partially opened and taped up merchandise, we would walk out empty handed. But today, I stumbled upon these.  

They were 40+, 3 Star, ABS, and 2.7 grams, specs in line with other premium brands. Three balls from the likes of Butterfly or Nittaku could run you $8. It was $8 Friday at the ‘Bins, and you could get 50 of these intriguing projectiles for that!  I turned to Jeff, “Look!”. 

“Let’s split ‘em” he said.

When we went back to our vehicles, we divided up the spoils, finding them quite colorful. Interesting, the 3-Star Easter egg colored balls had no stars on them, nor any markings whatsoever. Arriving home, Amazon’s website showed 8000+ reviews on them with 4.5 stars. A number of reviewers said their cats loved them, and I didn’t scroll enough to find any tournament players chiming in, hmmm. 

So Monday morning it was off to the torture track, Schaumburg Park District to get a verdict on this impulse buy. At 1/16th the price, was the joke on us, or the premium brands? Let’s find out. Mike, Jeff, and I hooked up with a relatively inexperienced woman and hit in doubles fashion. We rarely shifted out of second gear to facilitate keeping the ball in play. If you factor in a generous 30 balls hit per minute, and that we used this ball for roughly 30 minutes, old math says this ball was hit 900 times. It seemed to play quite the same as the name brand 3-star variety. Would these take a licking and keep on ticking? Mike expressed his doubts.

On one drop to the floor, Jeff and I heard the dreaded ‘craaacck.’ That’s all she wrote. So based on our limited test, 50 balls would possibly last 45,000 hits, or 25 hours, whichever comes first. Your mileage may vary, especially with big hitters. 

So the the size and playability seemed correct. The 3 star claim on the box was not evident on the balls themselves. ABS…can’t question that claim. How about the weight?  I trekked down to the basement for an old precision scale I used to use in my employment days. I rested 7 of these little beauties on the platform and got the following.

Well, 7 X 2.7 = 18.9 (grams), so  they are certainly not underweight, and the scale is likely a little off. So we used a little of our ‘disposable’ income so to speak, to buy what we knew all along…you get what you pay for. But I must say, they are fun to hit, and they do have other purposes, so you can’t put a price on that!