Hi Jim, it is always good to see you and I enjoyed our conversation at the Riv. last week. I respect your opinions as I respect everyones right to HAVE an opinion. I would like to respond to your "Observation #1" to explain where we are coming from. The only thing that really bothered me was that Trimble agreed with you 100%. I have never seen Gene agree with you before on anything.

The act of repairing, altering and modifying chips has greatly disturbed Michael Knapp, Ernie Wheelden and myself. We believe that it could be the ruination of our hobby and the club. I have had many discussions on the subject with Gene, our present and prior club presidents and anyone else who would listen. Ernie spoke with Dave Whalen and inquired regarding his methods and procedures of modifying chips. We know that a few thousand cancelled and damaged chips have been altered by David and his pupils. We know the names of many of our club members who have had chips altered. I can honestly state that neither Michael, Ernie nor I, have had any chips altered by Whalen or his group. I can also state that we have researched the alteration process and probably know as much about it as anyone, except David, himself.

We wanted to make a statement in TCR-10 that would condemn the modification process. We discussed many possibilities, including reducing the value of all unaltered chips, that had a known cancelled example. We decided that this would be unfair to the many collectors who have authentic uncancelled chips in their collections. We also considered making all modified chips an (A) value, as we did with many fantasy chips. The problem is that David is so good, that most of us can't tell whether a chip is authentic or has been repaired.

I will try to explain some of his procedures for those of you that have not heard. He can repair any drill hole, notch or damage, as long as the hole, notch or chip, isn't in an insert. He has a large box of broken chips that he obtained from one of our dealer-members. From these fragments he can make a plug to match the chip color, but he can't make a two-colored plug, so he can't repair the edge of an insert. The polyurothene liquid fills the void around the plug and picks up the reflective color from the clay. He takes an impression of the mold and impresses it into the plugged area. After replacing the cross-hatching on the serface, the chip looks as good as new. I would like to obtain one of his repaired chips so that I can x-ray it. I believe that the different density of the area around the plug would show as a darker circle around the plug. I did not send a chip to be repaired as I do not want to be on the list of persons who have had chips repaired by David.

David can also repair holes in paper inlays, by removing the inlay, pluging the hole (any color can be used for these), making new inlays on his computer and replacing the cross-hatching.

Now, back to our decision on how to address this matter in TCR-10. We learned that the average price that our members have paid David to repair their chips is about $25. We decided to add $25 to the cancelled valued as this was the cost of the fix. REMEMBER, the modified (MOD) value is entirely theoretical, as we can't tell the difference between the altered and the unaltered chip. Even though it appears that we are rewarding the culprits with a $25 bonus, it is far from the value that they had hoped to achieve. As an example, the Flamingo L.V. $5 RECTL, Navy with 5-Off White N6508, unaltered is valued at $1100. There are (were) many drilled ones, valued at $130. Our modified value is $155, which is a far cry from the $1100 value that the perpetrators want it to be. We thought that our valuations may make them think twice before having a chip "fixed." Why would anyone spend $25 to increase the value of their chip $25? It is not a reward. It is breaking even. Right or wrong, this was our decision. We sincerely thought that it would be in the best interest for the club and the hobby.

We are aware that many of you are upset with our decision, and we respect your opinions. We hope that you are also aware that we want to stop the act of altering chips as much as any of you, and we thought that our choice was the right one. However, we will take this dialog to heart and reconsider our pricing of MODs in TCR-11. As always, we appreciate the input of those of you who care to make and keep our hobby fair and honest. KMW's goal has always been and continues to be to provide a comprehensive and realistic source of reference to the hobby.