I talked to Charlie Rogers today who is also of the opinion that Marv probably will not be getting out the new edition soon - he has a waiting list of about 75 people who want the new guide.

We talked about how important a proper price guide is to the health and continued growth of a hobby like ours and about how big the convention is already looking this year due to a huge spurt in new membership and renewed interest by older members (like myself).

He said that if some of the people who have been around in this hobby a long time could get together and either send him excellent scans or the actual coins, then he has the proper equipment to accurately take photographs and do the layout for a priceguide. He believes that a price guide with photographs is the only way to properly do the job so that people can see the "variaties" to compare with strikes they acquire. I tend to agree that this would be a really nice way of producing a priceguide and a boon to our hobby.

I wonder if some of you who have been here a long time and have the most complete collections and knowledge of the hobby wouldn't want to form a comittee as a labor of love. If you provide coins that would be returned to you, photos, and inside knowledge of numbers produced and numbers destroyed (when you know these things) and put together intelligent estimates of value based upon your collective knowledge, it sounded to me like Charlie Rogers would do the work of putting together a guide for you. He doesn't have the knowledge of Silver Strikes but he does have the knowledge of how to produce a priceguide that is both functional, complete and highly marketable.

If someone wanted to talk to him about the feasibility of organising something like this, you could reach him at 1-800-50-POKER.

It seems rather coincidental that I had this conversation with Charlie today and I got on the bboard and Lisa gave us the news that she heard Marv might not be able to complete his guide soon so I thought maybe "The Powers That Be" are nudging me to share this conversation with you

My Best To You All,
Avram