...which unfortunately have taken toll in what both
you have expressed.

Though I can understand and see the need for
geographical chapters within our club...I have to
fully agree that specialty chapters are displaying
a lack of sharing those specialty intersts with the
general membership...and there is room for
improvement

FACTS within the last year:

Chicago ANA: Not one exhibit by any of the 2000+
members. My suggestion prior last year's ANA was
that those who were in a chapter converge at the ANA
to show the world what you specialize in. Not even
an echo of a response was heard. Nothing! NOT
EVEN ONE EXHIBIT in all of the Midwest (or anywhere
else).

Philadelphia ANA: After the embarrassment of those
who strived to bring about a classification for our
club to be able to exhibit at ANA was a disaster, a discussion regarding
this year's ANA followed. Thoughts by both Archie and
myself were discussed on how wonderful it is that hundreds of
club members are within a short drive of a
convention that attracts people (collectors) from
the world over. The ATLANTIC CITY chapter was
brought up, too, with possibly their president
calling for members of that chapter to exhibit their specialty. No response, whatsoever.
Thanks to Nate's exhibit (and Archie') we were able
to at least exhibit Atlantic City chips and Premium
Tokens. Though not a "killer turnout" as expected,
it was still something...but not even close to the
specialty intersts those members could have shared.
The FACT is that not too many specialy collectors
cared to share.

Club magazine: Only 40-pages in this summer's
Issue. Please, no excuses that it was because of
our convention, because we've had conventions before
where the magazine had articles submitted by
specialty collectors. Thanks to Mary Lou Waterbury,
there was a full page of text on Silver Strikes.
It's been years since I've seen a magazine with only
40-pages. In fact, even when our club publication
was simply a newsltter we had more than 40-pages in
some issues.

So, all I'm suggesting here is that Steve and
David's message holds a lot of FACT....something in
which I play with. I see room for improvement, as
we are not collectivly sharing our specialty
interests with the whole membership. We need to
become that one big group who used to stand tall
yelling out to othere, "Look at me...look what I
collect...let me tell you more."

I'll be exhibiting at the Atlanta ANA as I do at FUN
each year. Will I be the only one???

JB