It is my fervent hope, that with the additional new faces which will be coming on the Board in 2003; plus the couple of new faces already in place ... things may be different next year. Until then, club members must be ever-vigilant in exposing those who would cause this tremendous havoc to our hobby.

I agree with you Gene ... identifying these bogus chips, and those who are creating them, must take on a higher agressive priority with the elected officials of our club in order to rid ourselves of the fraudlent characters on ebay and elsewhere.

A few courageous individuals working by themselves to expose the frauds among us is not sufficient. Literally hundreds of chip collectors have to involve themselves in the "politics" of tomorrow. No longer can the slogan be ... "hey, I'm just here for the fun of the hobby ... leave me out of the politics".

The "fun" ceases after the hobby is destroyed and all those who put up the good fight are no longer around to fight tomorrow's battles. To hell with ebay's negative feedback policy and the get- even mentality by those who would screw us. Expose the b*stards who think that ripping off chip collectors is the new fun-game in town.

I've said many times in the past.... and it remains just as true today.... With 2800 members in CC & GTCC, we have unused clout and political muscle that few of us realize. It's time we all pulled together, like we did with the slabbing issue, to drive the bad apples away from this hobby and onto something else that is less threatening to fake.

It's time to forget about our perceived saviour, the Hobby Protection Act. That window of opportunity for revisions to the HPA has been closed by our legislators several years ago. We've got to do our own policing by ourselves.

When someone is exposed on ebay offering questionably described material ... a flood of emails of outrage sent to the seller (and to ebay) must come about. Yes, we can expect to receive the same stock answers from ebay's "Safe Harbor" as some of have received in the past ... but that must not discourage us from continuing our efforts everytime one of these fly-by-night "unkowledgeable" chip sellers offer something they claim they did not know was not real. Let's all begin TODAY!

Are YOU up to the challenge ... or are you going to let someone else fight your battle for you?

The new Playboy chip fakes should be immediately added to the club's webpage of fakes, fantasies and counterfiets so that links to that valuable reference document can be sent to the proper authorities and/or buyers and sellers of this fraudulent material.