The club in general and the publicity you'd get from it by trying to openly own history could come with a lot of blowback and a bad look in general. IMHO.

I've not seen a case in history where a hobby association fought folks sharing their history or artifacts. Coins Cards etc welcome sharing images and history and don't worry about image submitters being so obsessed with recognition. and threatening law suits and such. I again ask, are you in this for the hobby or the perceived recognition?

Have you seen me make the same claims as Kaplan that we process crop, enhance and change images and now we own them?? No, we don't, we do all that also but claim no ownership of the images etc. they are for the benefit of the hobby and to spread interest in the hobby! Are there that many members so short sighted that you believe the club is bigger than the hobby?

As mentioned by many over the years there forums with 10's of thousands of members, Facebook groups spanning 8000 collectors, Instagram and on and on and what does the club have? Well let me tell you from the last issue of the club magazine:

536 Regular annual members, if they all stay that's $21,440
99 Associate Members, don't know how much that is or why the level even exists.
245 Life Members, you got their dough and that ship has sailed.

That's a total of 899 members for the Almighty National Club or just 10% of just one Facebook chip collecting page! 10% of 100% folks interested in chips! AT ONE SITE.

Almost equal to the members of PokerChipper.com, a small chipping site.

And you want to fight about growing and restricting the accessibility to the hobby itself.

Also in the magazine it shows that the club gained 141 new members YAYYYY
it shows the club Lost 107 Members..... BOOO
a net gain of 34 (18 of which I had to beg to join and 5 that Vergatos signed up at his show) members and your celebrating success and talking about gatekeeping history???

As for the show (convention) I hear 800 +/- attended, I haven't asked but how many of those in the count were the dealers/ dealer helpers and how many were just plain old visitors?

Im not here to rip the club like this Cary/Freedner guy at all, I believe in the club and what it SAYS its mission is, but what I see is saying and actually practicing that mission drifts along the way IMHOO.

Its time to wake up and smell the coffee...... Its HOBBY FIRST, Club second only to support the hobby. Unless its truely just a business pretending to be a 501c3 educational organization of which on much research I have done before running for VP doesn't seem to be compliant in its practices with the Internal Revenue Services requirements in many areas.

8000 members alone on a Facebook page........ 8000! somewhere the programming is awry.

Let us not forget the members you chased away or got so aggravated the quit collecting... Steve Cutler and guys like him and another great chipper like Paul Shaufer who offered the club the most innovation in the history of the club!!! Just ask him about that!

This is long so Ill stop But heres a few numbers from other hobbies you might consider who dont play we own the hobby and its pictures and data:

Estimated total organized coin club membership

Accounting for people who belong to both the ANA and one or more local clubs:

Conservative estimate: 35,000–45,000 unique collectors
Most likely estimate: 40,000–60,000 unique collectors
Upper-end estimate: 70,000–80,000 if many unaffiliated regional clubs are included.
Perspective

The United States probably has:

300–500 active organized coin clubs
40,000–60,000 people who belong to organized coin collecting clubs
Millions more people who collect coins casually but do not belong to any club.

American Philatelic Society (APS)

The American Philatelic Society is the largest stamp collecting organization in the world.

22,981 members (as of December 31, 2025)
More than 450 affiliated local stamp clubs (APS Chapters) and over 600 dealer members.
Estimated organized U.S. stamp club membership

Like coin collecting, many collectors belong to both APS and a local club, so simply adding memberships would double-count many people.

A reasonable estimate is:

Category Estimated Unique Members
APS members (mostly U.S.) ~20,000–23,000
Local club members not in APS ~10,000–20,000
Total organized U.S. stamp collectors 30,000–45,000

Hobby Estimated Organized U.S. Members
Sports cards 250,000–500,000+
Pokémon TCG collectors/players 200,000–400,000+

My estimate

If I were preparing a business plan or investor presentation for PokerChipper, I'd use:

Core serious collectors: ~10,000
Active U.S. casino collectible collectors: 30,000–60,000
Worldwide active collectors: roughly 50,000–100,000