John is absolutely correct. There was a spirited movement several years ago to do exactly what Terry Shaffer has alluded to.

A committee was formed to develop a Universal Numbering System and this committee made several public reports at the club's past annual conventions. Unfortunately, there was very little public support and very few chippers in the audience came out to hear these reports and/or to contribute to the discussions and debates that went on. I've not heard too much more from this committee, but my impression was that the universal system being proposed to put into place was too cumbersome and that collectors were not likely to be weaned from the various systems currently in place by other cataloguers.

I had even published a crossover table in one of my earlier Atlantic City Catalogs that gave Ginsburg's numbers as compared to Black's numbers as a means of comparison ... but the idea seems to have died on the vine.

How many collectors would give up their Chip Rack numbers that have been recorded in hundreds of personal databases; tracking their individual collections, and switch over to a completely new Universal Numbering System as an example?

Not too many I would guess.