Below, I use ”slabbed” and “graded” interchangeably. Michaels message is in italics. Mine is in regular font. I’m using voice to text to dictate this, so you may see some typos, like the word slapping instead of slabbing. Accept my apologies in advance, and deal with it, lol.

Everything you say is true, and everything I wrote in this thread is also true.

The fact remains, though, that if people really wanted slabbing (say, the real high end collectors), they could have slabbed their chips. No one actually Said a min stopped them. The Club gave its opinion and, to some extent, tried to influence members away from slabbing, but it did not and could not have stopped a whole group from slabbing if it was really important to them and their continued presence in the hobby.

I think you are minimizing the words “some extent”. I don’t want to call out individuals, but I’ve brought the subject up many times with a lot of different people, and the ones who are against it are VERY against it, but not because of a greater good. It’s because they don’t personally like slabbed items and feel it would cost them more to acquire items that were slabbed.

The majority of the members I’ve spoken to don’t understand the club’s position, and why some of the members, mostly the old guard if you will, are so vocal about preserving the anti-slabbing stance.

Most seem to be OK with slabbing and have no problem with people choosing not to have their chips graded and slabbed, but they fear buying counterfeits and would prefer to have an option of buying an item that has at least been looked over by an unbiased third party, or at least someone studied enough to be more expert than them.

There is also an underlying sense of fear of angering the gods. And by that, I mean, newbies who don’t feel it’s their place to disrupt long-standing traditions. Or going against the opinions of long-standing members for whom they have great respected and who have given so much to the hobby.

My point is that blaming the club for their being no slabbing and equating that with killing the hobby is nonsense, since people could still have slabbed their chips if that was really what they felt they needed to do.

I did not say that preventing slabbing was killing the hobby. I quoted a former president who said that allowing slabbing would kill the hobby. I did state that the club, in terms of membership numbers, is in decline, and that is a fact. I do not know whether slabbing would contribute to greater numbers of collectors being involved. I just see that, from attending the FUN show last January, something like 200,000 ft.² was filled with people buying and selling slabbed items with absolutely zero objection.

Of course, the issue with who was going to do the grading and whether the volume of slabbing was going to be enough for the reputable companies to get involved, still remained. But, those are not the fault of the club. Cary's club bashing is, if you think hard about it, nonsense.

There are a number of different grading agencies, and they all will be quite interested in earning the business of the casino collectibles obvious. Leave it to the free market to decide whether individuals will choose to get their items, graded and slabbed, and let the companies that want to do the work pitch us on why we should let them, perhaps get reduced pricing through their CCA membership, and help the companies get the expertise that we will all want them to have when grading an item that we submit.

I don’t know if we have time to get this done, but I would love to invite any and all of these grading companies to come to the convention and give us their sales pitch. I think it will be very well attended, and it would give the anti-slabbing folks a chance to ask questions and voice their objections to those folks. It would be quite interesting and telling to me if efforts were made to not allow those companies to make a presentation. Censorship, anyone?

That is my point. Do you disagree, Barry?

Michael

Cary is passionate about his position, and so am I. I am unsure what your position is. Are you saying that the club should continue to disallow slabbed items from appearing in the club auction, preventing potential fundraising revenue? Are you saying the club should continue to disallow slabbed items from appearing in exhibits, potentially preventing rare items from being seen by attendees? Would you be for or against a motion to have the club remove its opinion from the website and other club materials? Would you be for or against removing all restrictions on slab slabbed items at the annual convention?