Charlie; You are absolutely correct. The early bird welcome social hour; the trading sessions; the various educational seminars; the public meeting; the auction; etc., all had complimentary hot and cold beverages provided for the attendees... paid for out of the club treasury. Some morning sessions even had complimentary danish pastries provided. This cost should be borne by the attendees, or from convention revenue, not by club members dues who did not attend the convention. As for one poster "who got there 15 minutes late" .... what can I say? Were we all supposed to wait for him to arrive? <g>

The annual dues a club member currently pays, just about covers the cost of his/her magazine four times a year... and if that's all a member wants from his dues, that's all he/she should be forced to pay. There are some mrmbers who continue to insist that everybody should automatically get first class delivery of the magazine. How much money does one think the club has at it's disposal with 2500 members? And not all club members are paying $20 per year. Some are only paying $5 per year. Just add up the annual dues alone, at $20 x 2500 and it comes up to $50,000. So the mere fact that the club has $30,000 or so in the bank is not a large amount of money when one considers the bottom line expenses. Now there is talk about paying up to $10,000 for some chip manufacturer's records? I wonder how many club members will truly support that expense?

Those club members who demand more services and perks should be willing to "pay as you go" for them. I think, like Wayne does, that there should be maybe a $20 or $25 per person banquet ticket charge for a convention dinner, payable in advance. That's the only way that an accurate head count can be projected so that no one gets left out. Who could have predicted the number of club members who showed up on Wednesday night ... many of whom were staying at other properties in town. There is no such thing as a free lunch. A $5 associate membership simply does not pay the bills anymore.... and that's my two chips worth.