Round robins have disappeared from the hobby because of the rising cost of postage and unscrupulous behavior by a few individuals. Let me explain what a round robin is ... someone starts the round robin by putting together a group of their traders in a certain category, like $1 Riverboat chips for example. The starter gets a group of collectors together, usually around 10, and puts them in an ordered list. The group of chips is mailed to the first one on the list and that collector selects chips that they want and replaces them with their traders that are not already in the round robin. Then collector #1 mails the round robin to collector #2 and the process is repeated until the chips wind up back with the starter.

Here is the new concept, that will lower postage costs to the participants and eliminate the opportunity for the unscrupulous to take advantage. I can write a program to do a round robin website. Instead of participants mailing the chips around, they will make their selections from pictures of the chips on the website and upload images of the replacement chips. All the participants will mail their replacement chips to the starter with a return mailer with the proper postage. The starter would then mail the selected chips to each of the participants. Postage costs are lowered for each participant, because they only have to cover the back and forth postage of the chips they want, not the entire round robin. Since participants only get their selected chips after their replacement chips have been received and inspected, the possibility of unscrupulous activity is eliminated.

I haven't written the program yet, but will only do so if there is enough interest. I would let others use the program to run their own round robins. I am looking for comments about how you think this should work, your possible concerns, and if you would be a participant.