Steve; I too am dismayed to hear that you no longer enjoy the "hobby" as much as you used to. There just seems to be so much resentment lately against anyone who sells chips at a profit.... yet everyone looks forward to the annual conventions where 100 dealers tables are set up for people to buy and sell casino chips .... and when some folks tire of their hobby ... or a spouse has inherited a collection upon the death of her life-long mate ... he/she seeks out the services of a dealer to sell the collection to.

There seems to be a purists attitude on this bb that no one should sell a chip above face value ... that everybody should be trading. How can that be anymore Steve... when the casinos manufacture only enough chips LE for 100-150 collectors ... and there are 2700 current members in this club? One could mis-interpret your comments to mean that you object to the growth of the club.

This "hobby" is not a handful of people anymore like it was in the "good old days"... where everybody knew everybody else. Times are changing Steve. Chip sales now flourish on Ebay ... by new sellers who used to decry what new issues dealers were doing. No longer do we trade a stack of mine for a stack of yours; like Bruce Landau describes to us what "it used to be like". That's long gone ... and will never be again. I'm sure that many former chippers left "the hobby" when that former scenario changed...

Maybe the change has to do with the casinos issuing of hundreds of LE's because of the demand for the product that has changed our hobby and has caused this new explosion of interest... and the new collector has taken the place of those "old-timers" who have become disenchanted. Ten years from now ... many of today's collectors will be looking back and saying saying that the year 2002 was the good old days.... and longing to return to that enjoyable period of our "hobby".

I don't know of any other "hobby" that does not have "dealers" engaged in supplying collectors with their wants... at fair prices. If you know of any, I would like to hear a few examples. All I know is that my A.C. new issues subscribers from all over the country seem to be very happy with the valuable service I provide.... or at least they tell me they are.... and no; I've never told one of them "it is none of your business".... but then, I don't recall any of them ever asking "how many do you have"?