exception, rather than the rule....

Once upon a time I used to send notifications to all the OTY Finalists that one or more of their chips, keys/cards or strikes had been nominated as a Finalist. With rare exception, I did not receive a reply or response. Even when a casino was selected as the OTY winner, it continued to be a struggle to get their attention (in many cases). Over time, I have given up on the "Finalist" notifications to focus my attention on getting the attention of the winning casinos only.

With respect to acquiring and displaying the OTY Finalists (the top ten nominees of each category) I have purposesly attempted to get "loaners" from members as an encouragement of OTY participation in general and also in hopes that the loaner that goes on to become the OTY winner, might then be donated to the Club for the Permanent Collection of All Past OTY Winners. While there have been a couple of instances where a casino wishes to donate the OTY winner (and the Club is happy to accept that donation) there is a preference that the donations come from Club members, and their generosity then gets recorded in the records the Club. Primarily on the OTY Winners page of the Club's website, but also in the various articles written about the OTY Awards in follow-up to each year's contests in the Club's award winning magazine (Casino Collectibles News).

So, having said all that, I again thank you for your effort and I will be very interested to see if there is additional follow-up. In the event that a key is provided by the casino/hotel I will still be displaying and giving credit to Club member Tony Van Hook for the loan. In the event that the key goes on to win CKOTY honors, then I will ask Tony if he would like to donate the key to the Permanent Collection. If Tony prefers to keep his key, AND one has been provided by the casino/hotel, then I will use that key as the donor key. If one is not available from the casino/hotel, then I will open it to the Club's membership asking for the donation, as I have done in the past.

Sorry to be long-winded on this, but I wanted to cover all the bases.

Best regards,

Jim