Hi William,

The slabbing "problem" won't eradicate itself in our hobby without an ongoing fight.

The difference between allowing dealers to display slabbed chips on the bourse floor tables, and allowing slabbed chips to be in the club auction is, when the club receives a direct financial benefit from the sale of a slabbed chip as the result of an auction lot sale, the club has sanctioned the validity of the item sold. Ergo, Jim Kruse won't do so, and I think his agonizingly difficult decision on this matter was absolutely right.

Teaching the slabbing companies a lesson needs to be done at the willingness level of our club to let them have free reign in our hobby. Let dealers who don't know the hobby slab chips and try to sell them at their convention tables. Sahara Coins is a perfect example. They didn't know our hobby, but bought the company line from ICG, and has had 100's of chips slabbed. They will sell them to uninformed coin collectors. They sure didn't get much biz at the convention.

Keep them out of our auction. The CC & GTCC doesn't need to sanction this practice by allowing slabs in the auction. If they do allow them, I personally can't view it as anything less than a full sanction of the process and the product.

Bob