With all due respect Doc... and you and I go back to the beginning and I consider you to be a dear friend ....and there is no one in the hobby that I respect more... I hear that same fence-sitting phrase over and over again. "I'm not in favor of slabs but......"

Doc; The Board could have easily taken the postion that the CLUB is not in favor of slabbing .... but they didn't. They opened the welcome door to the slabbers and said come on in and break bread with us as an equal!

The Board could have just as easily said that the organization is not prohibiting members from purchasing, selling, trading slabbed chips outside of our three-day convention ... but they didn't.

The Board could have said that the grossly overexaggerated grading system that accompanies slabbing is not in our members best interest.... but they didn't. They openly welecomed the slabbers with their abusive 1-70 point grading system.

The Board (nor anyone else) has never suggested a smokescreen ban on Silver Strikes, roulettes, tokens ...., but if the grading/slabbing companies subsequently get into those arenas, and begin slabbing those items, then I (and I'm sure others) would vigorously oppose that development as well. Does anyone think that the slabbers will be content with just slabbing chips if it is successful? I don't.

The line has been drawn in the sand. We, as an organization, either stop the slabbers in their tracks here, or we forever bite our tounges down the road after the slabbers have become firmly entrenched in our hobby. When that happens, there will be lots more than the Kruse's and the Trimble's to replace.

"If we don't learn from history, we're doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again."