The message above is nothing but a lame self-serving "excuse" why spammers think they should be allowed to do anything they want in the forum, no matter how much they hurt decent collectors. Since the forum owner won't do anything to police the board, either to ban those few people who deliberately and continuously abuse it, or to protect the collecting community from greedy speculators, then it is up to us users to make sure that the simple rules are enforced.

We collectors should not be bombarded with constant spam from the same people over and over. Decent people shouldn't have to even see the constant sales and off-topic spam in the first place, much less be told to "ignore" it. In most cases of spam, just the obvious message titles themselves, which can hardly be ignored, are offensive.

We shouldn't have to put up with deliberate off-topic inflammatory messages (usually written in all-caps and full of grammatical errors), with messages by anyone whose fraudulent actions have resulted in them having been banned from participating in auctions and having been unanimously expelled from a collector club, with messages from those whose only response to other messages is to call people names plus curse them and threaten them, and, while we are at it, from greedy speculators, especially those who pay stooges to monopolize strike machines during special runs, which prevents decent honest collectors from having a fair chance to play the machines themselves.

There are many great silver strike dealers. They respect the forum, and don't constantly bombard it with non-stop spam. The good dealers provide strikes at fair prices, and aren't out to use cheap tricks to gouge every last cent they can. They know the value of maintaining long-term relationships with their customers, while the quick-profit hustlers and speculators only look for victims.

It has been greedy speculators, interested only in short-term profit, who virtually destroyed many other collecting hobbies, such as Hot Wheels, sports cards, phone cards, Beanie Babies, and others. They use their tactics to run up prices to absurd levels, take their quick unearned profits, and then disappear, usually leaving the hobby in shambles. Those of us collectors who don't want to see this happening with silver strikes must act to insure that it doesn't. If we stick together, then it will no longer be "open season" on silver strike collectors, and the greedy speculators will have to look for some other hobby to ruin for their own personal benefit.