Craig has hit the nail on the head with his statements about the other slot directors and managers. Most of them have never given an accountability report to their bosses as to how the machines are doing on the floor other than whining about the time it takes to fill one. Most of the decisions corporately have been made by higher up people. The letter from IGT did a lot to trash the strike program with “pay $10k for the machine”, “no more support”, and “buy your own coins”. The managers up the chain just bailed on the program especially with out any help from the directors in the trenches. They didn’t know the program and didn’t care.

We’ve had many discussions among collectors in our club about what we collect. I for one, only my 2 cents worth, collect the coin with a design on it. The content of the coin has never been a factor as to weather I placed it in my collection or not. I do not collect non-Nevada strikes but have seen many beautiful HSP designs and to the non-collector they wouldn’t know the difference. Don’t forget, it’s John Q Public that keeps the machines humming between the collector visits. Without them we would have no hobby. We need a fairly quick fix or there will be no hobby

I think the numbers of strike collectors that collect the strikes for silver value only are very few. Maybe in the beginning when there were only .999 silver sevens but all that has changed. We collect twenty dollar strikes and they only have the rim as silver so I’m not sold on “ I collect them for the silver” thought process.

With silver prices so high and rising we need to do something to keep the hobby alive if only as a temporary fix. Two schools of thought, one, silver returns to four bucks an ounce and we are all happy again or two, silver goes to fifty bucks an ounce and we are all punching centers and we’re smart silver collectors. At this time I wouldn’t put money on either direction. So, what do we do now, 2008 to keep our hobby alive? Does someone like Craig or Shaun put out a set of really nice designed .999 HPS silver strikes and we all have a look at them??? (and play and collect them) I say YES ! They sure are a lot better than the decals!

I don’t think changing the whole strike program with different denominations is a good idea since everybody collects tens, forties and two hundreds. We need to keep to our present standards, again my personal opinion like all that has been written here.

My whole point here is about “SAVING THE HOBBY” and what it takes to make it happen. If you want to collect silver, buy bullion, if you want to collect silver strikes, we need to do what it takes to help the hobby survive.