Paintball Rumor Mill

[going_home]

Small bore barrels are very overrated right now. The paint all across the board is horrendous.

So if the rumor mill turns out to be true, and the one large paint manufacturer (GI) buys the other large paint manufacturer (KEE), will the paint quality get better or worse ?


Can the paint even get any worse ?


Field paint like Marballizer used to be the best, now its no better than $30 dollar a box Midnight from Sports Authority.

[vintage]

there is always Nelson.

[SummaryJudgement]

[BigEvil]

At some point, the market will dictate improvement. Locally we are seeing it now, with fields switching to different suppliers and brands because of quality issues.

[Syko89]

At osg the marbs from canada "rectangular box" where complete crap while the marbs from Korea/Taiwan "square box" were at least usable. I am liking the valken graffiti and redemption and hear good things about gi sports paint line but issue is that for the bigger or busy field valken/GI cant guarantee the volume of paint the fields need. Also the are other financial benefits for going with kee such as discounts on rental equipment, and event sponsorship "give away items"

[going_home]

there is always Nelson.

Thats a north eastern paint that I've not seen in the deep south.

GI, Kee, and Valken are all I've seen, and the quality is about even across the board, sub par to barely tolerable.....

[Pneumagger]

OK, so back in "the day" (late 90's) you could get good paint but it was always about $75/case. The decent stuff was still $60/case. $30-$40 for a case of paint we see all over nowdays is pretty good pricing. But apparently there's a tradeoff. I remember $30-$40 paint from back in the day being pretty terrible too. About 1/3 of the shots were curveballs. Sometime they even jammed up revvys. Seems like not much has changed since then.

knowing what you know now about current paint, would you be willing to pay $75/case for 1990's marbalizers today?

[vintage]

lets go way back, the only choice at the field i played at in the early 90's was ZAP, it was $70.00 case(i think) of 2500 and breaking in the gun was almost unheard of but you got lots of bounces but accuracy as i remember it was good. the local field has now switched over to Valken and i picked up a half case yesterday to tinker with and i'm going to have to clean it as i noticed some color at the bottom of the bag when i got home. it seems to me nowdays that they can't get the paint to do more than one thing at a time, not break in marker, break on target, or shoot straight. it all hoovers.

[going_home]

If they all break with a drop of 4' I'd pay 55-60.

They are charging 65 for todays marbles....

[BLachance75]

Field paint usually sucks, that's the main reason I prefer to play at BYOP fields. Luckily the field closest to me is BYOP and OSG in NH does an monthly BYOP which is close enough that I will drive up for.

My prefered paint has been Valken Redemption for the past few years. Usually it is between $50-60 depending on where I get it and it has been consistantly good. Playing mostly pump I want good consistant paint that will break on target.

[vintage]

import fees

[BigEvil]

The bad thing about any of the Valken paint, is that they don't stay for very long. If I use any at the field, a week later they are garbage. I don't even bring left overs home anymore.

[kfletch]

The bad thing about any of the Valken paint, is that they don't stay for very long. If I use any at the field, a week later they are garbage. I don't even bring left overs home anymore.

I disagree. I keep mine in my basement in vip lock bags with a dehumidifier running and mine stay fresh. It's all in the packaging.

[blackdeath1k]

Used redemption that was 6 months old at justices field. It shot as good then as when it was bought. My paint gets rotated and shook up weekly though.

[athomas]

If you store the paint so that it isn't compressed and is at proper cool temperatures, it will actually improve over time. The shell will tighten up and the tension will cause a more spherical round shape. It will become more brittle as well, but not unshootable type of brittle. Some of the best paint I ever shot was over 4 years old.