What Doc says is very true. We can all relate to today's youth and their interests. However, unlike Doc, I don't define young chip collectors as children. "Young" chip collectors/members (to me) are those adults ages 30-50+.

In 1988, the year when the club was founded, I was 50 years old and the electronic age was in its infancy. My employer at the time (NJ Bell Telephone Co.) referred to the coming "information age" and wireless technology. I had a hard time accepting those changes that were on the horizon. Wireless telephones? How could that be? Never happen; so I thought! Competition in the Ma Bell companies was Radio Shack's telephone answering machines. Hell, the phone company was getting .90 a month rental on telephone extensions. .65 cents a month extra for the little light in the princess phones, which required a transformer plugged into your outlet for dial illumination. Color telephones other than black cost extra. For the first few years being the club president, I did not own a computer; only a Magnavox word processor, and I thought that was great when I could automatically justify the margins of the text as I typed.

There was no ebay, no simple scanners, no Craigslist, no ChipGuide, no Facebook, Twitter, etc., no proliferation of message boards like we have today. Some of you will remember CompuServe. Today I am 77 and my collections are still basically intact, except for the higher denominations ($25 & $100) many of which I have sold privately to other collectors or have been redeemed. Most of my duplicate LE chips have been redeemed at the cages since being unable to find other collectors who were wiling to pay even .50 cents over face value. The abrupt halt of the casinos issuing new chips and tokens also tends to dampen collector interests, so the collector instinct in some of us is to expand to other collecting areas such as roulettes, tournament chips, ashtrays, room keys, players cards, slot glass, dice, silver strikes, etc.

It no longer makes sense (to me and to Brenda) to hold onto large quantities of the same multiple redeemable LE chips nobody else wants when one can put that tied-up money to better uses. My adult children (and their children) have been exposed to my passion for collecting chips and other gaming memorabilia for many years now, but alas, they don't share the same enthusiasm that I had/have for the chip hobby. So what is today's older generation to do when there seems to be no genuine interest to pass our collections on to? One can only imagine what future innovations will be introduced in our society by the year 2025.

Enjoy your hobby that you have received so much enjoyment from all these years and hopefully you will recoup some of the financial benefits when you tire (or retire) from it.