the thread ..... >>>"If I am not mistaken, Archie himself used to collect coins"....<<<

For the record Steve, one of the biggest reasons I got out of collecting coins was because of slabbing. I gave a very long, well-detailed, from the heart explanation of this personal experience in one of my earlier extra-long posts.

What attracted me to this hobby (besides the fact that casinos opened up in my home state and I happened to collect NJ exonumia in the late 70's) is that I saw this new-found chip hobby "relatively clean" of BIG commercialism and fast-buck operators. I see the potential of that aspect raising it's ugly head now in the chip collecting hobby..... which in my opinion is on the brink of transforming itself and moving towards the "chip collecting industry",... just like coins have. But that's just my own personal opinion. I'm well aware, by reading the many posts on this bb, that there are others who think similarly and others who think differently.... and who have expressed themselves accordingly. That's what makes this such a great country.

As for the proposed "ban/prohibition/restriction" regarding allowing or not allowing slabs at the convention.... I still maintain; allow the camel to stick his nose under the tent and it won't be long before the whole camel is inside the tent... which is very difficult to get rid of. The only way to remove the camel once he is in, is to tear down the whole tent... and put it up again someplace else. I feel that this club has an opportunity to keep the camel out of the tent altogether by discouraging his presence to begin with... as a matter of club policy.

ANA couldn't keep the camel out, because they led the camel right through the front door of their tent by setting up their own grading/slabbing services, called ANACS (American Numismatic Association Certificaton Service). How could one "discourage" slabbing when they were doing it themselves and because the other start-up slabbing companies were making huge donations to the ANA and taking out full page ads in the organization's magazine?

Been there; done that, and I don't look forward to going through it all over again.

"YOUR INFLUENCE COUNTS! USE IT!!