Larry writes: "I LOVE my TCR, even if you did rate the Sands Reno Blue $25 "NCV" (V3378) as a C. The casino charges $25 for it, plays it for $25, and will redeem it at the cage for very nearly $25. The only catch is you have to have Canadian (nearly $40 worth) to buy one. I would think that'd make it a G."

Seems like it to me too, Larry! Myers, Wheelden and I are really good, but we're not yet good enough to read the minds of chips! We figured if it said NCV, it meant NCV! I thought it was a tournament or promotional chip. This is the first I've heard of a "no cash value" chip that's sold and can be cashed in! Wish we'd known of the use of these chips.

Hmmmmmmmm........lessee......a no cash value chip you can cash in. Can you say oxymoron?!

"rather than have two printed volumes, figure out what to provide as the bare minimum someone would need to have in their hands when out shopping for chips, and put the rest on CD, including as good of a color pictography "

And would you like fries with that? <G> We've discussed the CD idea ad infinitum, and have yet to come up with a solution that would satisfy what I think people are really after: a way to keep one's inventory, to search TCR in ways that it's not laid out, and to print lists - without also making the book easily copyable and piratable.

As for "the bare minimum someone would need," that's a whole different matter! There are as many "bare minimums" as there are collectors who specialize. We talked, for example, about removing all roulettes, NCV's, souvenir chips, fakes, reproductions and non-gaming commemoratives, and putting them in a separate volume. We even discussed putting all LE's in a separate volume to reduce the size of the "classic chip" volume. Trouble is, there are way too many collectors of these kinds of material to make any of these ideas practical.

Collectors don't (I think) want to have to search in two different books to find what they want or need.

We'll keep working on ideas, but so far we haven't come up with anything very satisfactory.

Keep your ideas coming!

Michael