…Ed Hertel brought this up in a reply to me in another post. So I figured I would tell my story about joining.

For a number of years starting about 1990, I had seen advertisements here in Las Vegas about Chip Shows. I thought that I would like to check one out. But one thing lead to another & I never made it to a show. I owned one of the largest Pool Leagues in the world at the time. 400 teams out of about a 100 Bars here in Southern Nevada. I was just too busy. Then in November 1996, I made a show at the Four Queens. I had a push to go because a good friend of mine, Bob Miklos who I had met in 1980, playing Poker, asked me to go see if I could find him a set of the Horseshoe $2.50 chips made for past WSOP Champions. I did find a set & even bought one for myself. I was at that point a Chip Collector.

As December rolled around I got to thinking about if there was some kind of organization dedicated to Casino Chips. I searched online & found the Casino Chip and Gaming Tokens Club. That is what it was called before the change to CCA. For the record, I never did like the name change.

I decided to join immediately, it seemed like a great idea, an organization to learn more about Casino Chips & meet people who had the same interest. I have never regretted joining, I even made some good friends over the years through the “Club”.

I decided early on to become a Life Member. The metal card you see here was something that they gave to Life Members, years ago. No idea why they stopped. I could have been Life Member #44, but asked if I could get #52, since that was the year I was born.

These days it seems like people don’t rush to join an organization, like I & many others did back in the day. They just want to collect. That is fine, as I have said numerous times, the hobby of Chip Collecting does not need the CCA, the CCA needs the collector.

I also know what it is like to recruit members. I have won the award for doing so three times. To me that is key to bringing in new members. Have flyers made up, put them everywhere you go. Back in the day I would go to the break rooms of the dealers in the casinos, here in Las Vegas to place flyers on their bulletin boards. No matter what you do, you need to get the word out that we exist!

Lastly a big THANKS to the current CCA Board & those running for a position. I know you all work hard.