When did this hobby change (1 Viewer)

gopherblue said:
I was ostracized from the NE group as a result of participation in the boat buy, then later dragged through the mud and accused of all kinds of ridiculously stupid shenanigans by a specific person. :rolleyes:

(Fun fact—had I not been accidentally brought in to the boat buy, I would’ve been part of the BTP buy.)

FWIW, other than that individual, I’ve let bygones be bygones. TBH, I miss being trapped between Guinness and Bergs in circus games. Those guys are fun. Absolute drunk-monkey maniacs...but fun.
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How does one get accidentally brought into a NAGB??

I’ve clearly missed a lot related to the NE members leaving, Guinness was great fun back in the day
 
JRReynolds6181 said:
This might be a dumb question but what is a “boat buy?”
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Don't know what it was, but its result is the possibility for the poor layman to buy mint/near-mint THC Paulson chips second-hand, at objectively ultra-expensive prices (often verging on the obscene), still possibly the cheapest :D and least time-consuming (and soul-consuming) method of acquiring mint/near mint Paulson THC chips, especially if you 're NOT North-America-based and can't afford catch-and-release situations due to shipping costs and absurd Customs fees.
:)
 
Didn’t @ovo start a similar post to this a couple months ago?
 
**warning this is another Ben book with terrible grammar and long winded thoughts that will probably bore 98% of the community... feel free to read but you have been warned!! Lol

For what it's worth... @krafticus is an amazing PCF member.... in our short time (@FordPickup92) and myself on the forum he is one that opened his door to total strangers and hosts what I consider to be the best local home game action in our area!
He has spent hours talking to brie and I about chips and customs... sat down on his own time and showed us a few circus games, just overall fantastic guy!!

For our Holiday game not only did we get a special treat of playing with BTP tourney chips from my good friend @Chippy McChiperson. Mark also bought a couple hundred dollars worth of scratch offs just to throw into random pots at every table in the tourney... Mark has never asked for a dime...

The other members we have met and been invited to home games has been amazing... I couldn't ask for a better local group of PCF members, we have our extended family in the next state over with members like @Lil Tuna, @arch3r, @Seeking Alpha Social Club, @coolcustomer123 and the list goes on.... I couldn't agree more than with @AWenger... that meetup was our first and I will never forget your kindness, generosity and fine exhibition of card playing sir! We had to take breaks just to look at chips! Lol

So what's my point... I hear about the way things were and how bad it has gotten around the forum... as I said in Bries 5000th post this is our life now. Weeks can go by without buying a single chip (not many I know we have issues) but yet both of us are in constant conversation with members, new and old... every single day communicating and talking about our new found favorite hobby. The camaraderie and long term friendships we have already made are amazing!! I spent hours over the last few weeks talking to a member in Sweden daily... we have football pools for chips that fill up in no time! We have giveaways including playing hands of cards to determine winners! Its absolutely amazing all of the things you can get involved on here!

Flipping chips for profits will never stop, name calling and negativity is present in all aspects of life... we all have a choice to avoid them and those people! @Tommy I can't thank you enough for allowing new members and keeping this whole thing a float for others to enjoy!! As you can see Brie and I are very passionate about our membership and look not only to be active and willing to help in any way possible.

It all boils down to a simple phrase of "life is what you make it" again we are very new this is all just like a new relationship to us... I'm sure in time it will fade a bit... it takes an amazing amount of effort to stay as passionate about a hobby as @BGinGA, @detroitdad and @pltrgyst to get to their level of status here. I hope we have what it takes to get there but I also believe it takes new members and generations getting involved to keep it going!

So I pose a question.... what is it that PCF has lost, I see tributes to casinos and info on newly available chips, poker discussions about live hands, not only how to build tables, but storage racks and chip carriers....
I guess part of me as a new member doesn't understand what is missing, and if it is missing what will it take to bring it back? It seems the divide that happened long ago still exists, many of the long term members posting here I have rarely seen post... what is broken with the way things are now?

You know long ago hunting was a poor man's sport, viewed as a way to bring food in for families of lesser means... at those same times millionaires were taking African hunting excursions for huge sums of money... in today's time a hunting jacket can be $400 or $50.... if you want prime hunting renting land cost thousands of dollars a year for a few acres and 10 people competing against you to get it.... in the 70s all you had to do was ask the farmer or offer to do a bit of help... it's all relative and times are definatley changing...
Many people are looking to find ways to make money...

Just wondering what would make my buddy Mark, an amazing member of this community log off and say he's not coming back?

I thank every one of you that have helped Brie and I get started, the kindness, generosity and wisdom and I hope to we get the opportunity to pay it all forward!! Fellow chipper Ben
 
gopherblue said:
Witty repartee, charming personality, crossed wires. The usual.
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I have none of those things...I think I just figured out why I’ve never been invited to a NAGB

Zmasterben said:
“Hey, wait a minute! You aren’t gophergreen!!”
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This shouldn’t have made me laugh as much as it did...
 
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.

Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.

What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?

Initially, I created Chip Donkeys as a fun technical project while I was on paternity leave because I had some extra time and thought it would be a small fun place to hang out with some friends online, mostly local to the bay area, and would be a fun project for me to learn some web development skills. I never took it too seriously, or at least didn't intend to; hence the name "Chip Donkeys". From a technical perspective, it was a lot of fun to build. I learned a lot about how to set up a forum, what things look like under the hood, and all the work that goes into keeping this updated, setting up mail servers, setting permissions, setting up galleries, user groups, admins, how to identify when a banned user tries to create new accounts, etc. etc. That stuff was a lot of fun to build. What I didn't anticipate though, and perhaps rather ignorantly, was bergs & crew wanting to find themselves a new home, especially one which I had created given our history. I had heard he was starting his own website, so I thought it was odd he'd want to crash mine. Anyhow, it didn't matter initially, because he wasn't allowed on the site anyhow. But all of his friends started joining and posting and harassing me daily to let him join. I was literally hounded by them daily and eventually, out of exhaustion, I gave in and allowed him limited access. That was a mistake.

There were a lot of people with hurt feelings back then surrounding the boat chip group buys (though I was never one of them) which is what caused most of the traffic heading to CD. Many people felt as though they couldn't discuss what happened with the GB here because mentions of it were not allowed publicly for some period of time, so they were looking for another outlet to learn about and discuss what happened. I thought transparency was the way to go. I thought letting adults be adults with pretty much the only rule being "no shitting on others" would make for a great discussion landscape. In some ways it worked, but ultimately, I learned that sometimes people are just shitty, and that it's a lot of work to have to run around wiping other grown-up's asses all the time. Several of the threads turned into huge GB food fights with people slinging shit from both sides of the fence. I wasn't in on the boat chip group buys, so a lot of people naturally assumed I was "on the side of the have-nots", perhaps because I had started the website, but I tried to remain neutral about the whole thing and truthfully, I usually found myself siding with the views expressed by those who were actually in the GB more often than I found myself siding with those who were left out of it, although there were certainly some exceptions to that, mostly with respect to those who were clearly attempting to obfuscate the facts. But I didn't have any issues with private group buys being done and people wanting to keep them private. Makes perfect sense to me. If you can score some Paulsons, do it. Ask some friends to join you. Well done. I don't really care to rehash all of various viewpoints/topics that were being discussed back then, but I bring it up because watching all the bickering back and forth was extremely taxing and it was wearing on me quickly. What started out as a fun technical project was quickly turning into an adult babysitting project where I was constantly having to deal with shit slinging left and right from both sides of the fence. It got old, and it got old very fast.

The biggest lessons I learned though, is that I was wrong about @Tommy and the mods here. I wasn't a fan of the moderating that was taking place, and I thought moderating the forums at CD wouldn't be that big of a deal. I figured we'd just clean up a few random posts here or there, tell people not to shit on each other, and all would just work itself out and that we could just let everyone speak openly about anything and everything they wanted. LOL. Looking back, I was pretty ignorant. Moderating these forums is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK! And it's work that really sucks having to do. It really does feel like changing people's diapers. Grown-up's diapers. It's just way too much work to go through and edit people's posts, respond to the criticism for editing said posts, etc. It's just an endless cycle. It's just so much easier to delete turd posts and tell people to stop dropping turds or they'll get banned. And to follow up on those ban threats. Add on top of that all the PMs you have to answer as the owner of the site about anything and everything, even from people you really like (and from a few you don't), and it just became extremely overwhelming. Everyone has an idea about how to run the website, and they all have different opinions. Some people get offended when their ideas don't get adopted, others don't. Countless people chime in with ideas about who should be banned, who should be allowed back in, which 'like' button we should add next, what font size they would prefer on their screens, what font color they want, whether auctions should be allowed or not, whether or not they can run a group buy, asking for permission for them to post x, y, or z, people posting NSFW pics as their avatars, people constantly criticizing your decisions to edit posts where some asshole called another asshole an asshole, people threatening other people, people getting mad at you for editing messages where asshole A threatened nice person B, people getting mad at you because nice person C is getting picked on by asshole D and nobody is doing anything about it, and on and on and on. It's a lot of work. Some of these conversations really suck to have to go through, read, and respond to. You guys have NO IDEA the flood of nonsense that Tommy unquestionably has to deal with on a daily basis. But even the good conversations with the people I really like became overwhelming. I just couldn't get through them all. I was constantly overwhelmed with the website and it was something I never really anticipated. I had just become a new father at the time, and it got to a point where the website was taking up way too much of my time and after I returned back to work from being on paternity leave, I just couldn't do it any longer. It didn't take long before I realized that what I had created was a huge mistake, at least from the perspective of me running it. I think it would be fun to build a site for someone else, I did enjoy the technical aspect, but running things is a whole different ball game that I wasn't prepared for and would never do again. Which is a good thing, because if I were to, the ban hammers would come down so fast that there wouldn't be anyone left.

This forum is by far the most lenient forum I've ever encountered. The fact that there are only a few banned members here is pretty remarkable. Most forums wouldn't put up with half the shit that people here get away with, myself included. Creating an environment that is open and welcoming to everyone is critical for any forum to succeed. Guys like bergs are an absolute cancer to a web forum. The idea that this community has suffered in any way whatsoever by his absence is laughable. A funny joke or two here or there can be fun to read, but it's almost always at someone else's expense, and those quickly tally up. The number of members that someone like him chases away is difficult to exaggerate, and you'd never know about them unless you were an admin or someone paying extremely close attention. People pop their head to check things out, then they get shit on by someone like bergs and then they leave and never come back (or only come back for the classifieds). The bergs crew terrorized CT, they terrorized PCF, and they terrorized CD. Banning bergs was the best decision Tommy ever made for this site IMO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with me on that (though I don't want to put words in his mouth). I never really had any major issues with JButler. Sure, he enjoyed trolling people, but I never felt like he was an asshole to me, and he usually stopped short of being an asshole to others while trolling, and there were even a few times where he was extremely helpful to me in offering some advice when he really didn't need to and didn't have much incentive to.

At first, I had a lot of spare time because I was off work with paternity leave and my daughter was sleeping 18+ hours per day. But after I went back to work and the website really started picking up steam (there were over 20,000 posts after just the first couple months), things started to really spiral out of control for me time wise. I was working full time and it would take me at least 2 hours per night just to follow up with people and respond to PMs. With only a few hours per night with my new baby girl to begin with, this just wasn't sustainable. I just couldn't devote 2 hours to a website every night. Time with my family was my priority. Adding moderators helps somewhat, but there is still only so much they can do. Much of the demands that the site needs really have to be done by an administrator. Somethings can be put into cruise control once they've been set up, but overall, the work never ends. If there's only one takeaway from my post, let it be this: @Tommy does a pretty damn great job here overall, and if you guys want to show your appreciation, then sign up as a "supporting member" and thank him in the forums, NOT via PMs :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: (my words, not his). If you have some stupid ass question, please think twice next time before sending it. If you think you'd prefer a different font size, then please, for the love of Zeus, change the damn font on your screen and don't bug the admin or mods. Leave them alone and let them have a life please lol. They ALL do a great job here, and they deserve our gratitude. It's a difficult, time consuming, and less than thankless job.

What happened to the community?

As far as what happened to the "community", it's a combination of several things in my opinion, all of which were pretty easy to predict. It's just how markets work and what happens when people get their feelings hurt.

1) This community has grown by quite a bit over the years. That's a good thing overall, but it also has consequences that many of the long time members may not like. As the rate of posts with titles like "My chips are filthy, is there a way to clean these?" increases, it becomes exponentially less rewarding to respond to them for those of us who have seen it already 100 times (unless your name is @BGinGA, bless his heart). Nothing against the new members making these sorts of posts, this community is here to help and almost alway will, and all of us were new at some point, but as the community expands, these types of posts can begin to drown out some of the more interesting threads. And the interesting threads, instead of becoming more prevalent, just turn into longer and longer threads. Then people start derailing those extremely long threads and it takes FOREVER just to read through them (hell, this is going on night #3 for me just to get through this thread and respond to it). Long threads get longer and are more difficult to get through when the community grows. More and more posts become newer members asking, "what is the NAGB?" and people then start reexplaining stuff to them, and it just gets old for those of us who have been around for it all. Again, nothing wrong with asking questions, but as the community grows, the interesting content just becomes harder to find and it takes longer to get through.

2) Chip Room sales, flippers, and flip-bashers - Chip Room sales have had a drastic effect on overall market prices over the years. Each time a new casino gets bought out and the chips drop, it has a very significant and measurable effect on the market. That's just basic economics. When the valuations of everyone's collections grow or shrink, people are going to be affected by it. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone here is well off, and what might seem like small fluctuations in the market prices to some can be large fluctuations to others. Everyone has a number for what they'd sell their grail sets for whether they admit it or not, and when markets change, chips will change hands more quickly. Again, that's just basic economics. When this happens, some people get butt hurt. They start throwing stones, calling people "flippers", etc. Sometimes people are going through some serious shit storms in life and they don't feel like discussing it publicly and don't need to get shit on for liquidating their assets at market prices when they're trying to raise a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on after blowing through their 401k to pay for their wife's chemotherapy. They don't need someone on their high horse slinging mud at them for buying a rack of chips for $200 and later reselling them for $220 because the market has adjusted. Sometimes people just need the benefit of the doubt and need to be extended kindness. But all the "flipper" bashing that goes on here just drives people away as well. And when I say "drives people away", I'm mostly referring to the forums, not the classifieds. There are a ton of people who get pushed out of the "community", but who remain subscribed to the classifieds and now pretty much only participate there.

3) The boat chips group buy - Fairly or unfairly, this had a pretty drastic affect on the community overall. As the guy who started Chip Donkeys and as someone who had several friends on the "inside" of the group buy, I probably saw first hand how much of an effect this had on the community as a whole as much as or more than just about anyone. My inbox at Chip Donkeys became the "complaint box" for just about everyone who was upset about the whole ordeal. Some of their concerns were pretty valid, some were just sour grapes, but everyone has their own truth, and people were definitely pissed off about it. A lot of people. Some still are, but I'd say it's mostly water under the bridge now for most people. But it has had a DRASTIC effect on the community's interactions with one another ever since. Several people who had previously been anti-flipping vocalists were now seen flipping chips, and it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. Everyone inside the GB started getting lumped together, often receiving labels they didn't deserve, and they couldn't wash themselves of those labels no matter how hard they tried. So in turn, it changed the way they now addressed/approached the community as well. I've watched as people who previously never flipped chips before eventually get to a point where they just threw their hands up in the air and basically said, "ah fuck it", feeling defeated after getting falsely accused of flipping chips over and over despite them constantly either breaking even or taking a bath on most of their prior sales. Now, they want market prices. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but it's all part of the ripple effect that the GB caused. I've also watched several smaller cliques forming since the GB happened. PM deals have gotten more prevalent among some, and everyone's "I won't sell chips to you or you or you" lists have gotten longer. It's just what happens when lines get drawn and divisions get made. Personally, I was never upset at all about being left out of any of the group buys, and I can't really claim to fully understand the feelings of those who took being left out so painfully, perhaps because I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum (my nickname is "Rainman" for a reason lol), but I certainly watched it transpire and I probably saw it's full affect first hand more so than anyone else. It deeply hurt a lot of people to be left out, and it created divisions that will never be fully repaired. It is what it is.

4) BTP chips & SB chips - I don't know or care all that much about the drama surrounding these later Paulson buys, but it's definitely had an effect on the market/community as well. Perhaps it's just driven more wedges into the divides from the previous Paulson buys, but the divisions are present either way. Nice new Paulsons entering the market will apparently always piss some percentage of the community off and make some other percentage of the community tremendously grateful. It's sorta strange from my viewpoint though, because the only people who seem to be pissed off about these buys are the ones who either can't or don't want to pay the premiums that high end minty Paulson sets demand anyhow. Meanwhile, the introduction of all these newer "high end" sets entering the market has actually driven down the prices of almost all of the nice old school THC sets like LCOs, Empress, Palais des Congres, Outposts, Emerald Princess, Aztars, and others. These are some FANTASTIC sets that you can get your hands on now for some pretty great prices as a result of all these minty Paulsons hitting the market. Old school leaded THC sets with shaped inlays! Personally, I'd rather have any of these old school sets than most of the GB chips that go for 3x their prices anyhow. All the people bitching about GB chip prices should be thanking them for lowering the prices of the stuff they're actually buying IMO.

5) The economy - Overall, people have more expendable income now than ever before. It has had a very strong effect on every hobby, not just ours. Even baseball card prices have gone through the roof over the past few years. Markets change, and our hobby is a free market whether you like it or not. If everyone acknowledged that and started respecting each other's chip collections for whatever the market says they're worth instead of for what they want to pay for them, we could all separate the financial aspect of things from community and just get along. But I guess that's a pipe dream. But if I want chips from someone, I have zero problems with whoever I'm buying them from having made a profit by selling them to me. I don't care what they paid for them. I care what they're worth, and if I want them badly enough, I'll often gladly overpay. To each their own.

6) The combination of everything - Communities evolve over time. It's just natural. The chipping world is no different. The landscape of members is very different today from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago, let alone 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Add into that the current political divisions in this country, and everyone is on edge already.
 
And to address the "doxing" thread that people are talking about; yes that happened toward the end of Chip Donkeys, but it didn't have anything to do with me closing down the website. Those wheels were long since in motion already. I had already been in talks with several people about turning it over to someone else long before that thread was ever even started. The overwhelming majority of people disagreed with how I handled that situation and I've had a lot of time to reflect on it since. My views on that person have not changed. Whoever that person was (I still have no clue who they are, if they are even here on PCF, if they were just a random troll trying to stir shit up or what), but whoever it was was spouting hateful racist bullshit and defending bigoted police officers and police brutality against black people. There was more to the story than what was posted publicly, but I won't go into that. His hateful speech caused me to look into his account because it was so bad that I thought he couldn't possibly be a real person acting in good faith. I thought he must have been someone else just trolling everyone and I was trying to see if he was a previously banned member as we had several of them keep popping up and trolling people (I even thought it could have been bergs just trying to stir shit up). What I discovered was that this anonymous person had registered with an email handle that suggested he/she was a cop and that they almost always logged in from an IP address in Ferguson, Missouri (a pretty ridiculous "coincidence" if it was one). Who they are, what his/her name is in real life, or if they're even here on PCF, I still have no clue, and I don't care. As an admin, instead of getting involved in the thread itself and sharing my opinions of this person and calling them out as a probable cop from Ferguson, maybe I should have just banned the account and closed the thread instead. I don't know what the right way to handle a bigoted cop from Ferguson Missouri is, but apparently informing others that the bigot they were engaging with was likely a cop wasn't it. Perhaps I'm a bit further along the autism spectrum than I would think though, because I still don't share the views of the majority here, and I don't feel as though I "doxed" anyone. It's difficult to "dox" someone if you don't even know who they are, in my opinion. But, it's water under the bridge at this point for me. I really don't care. But it had nothing at all to do with why I closed down Chip Donkeys. The actual reasons I closed it are expressed above, but the Cliff Notes are that it demanded way more of my time than I was prepared for and able to give it, and I had just become a new father and returned to work full time. Something had to give, and for me it was the site. And I'm glad I closed it down.
 
RainmanTrail said:
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.

Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.

What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?
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Just popping in to quickly say this whole post (that I refuse to quote all of) might be one of the best things you've contributed to this forum.
 
I’m new here but agree with a lot of those points and can relate @RainmanTrail

I don’t run a forum but I run a large social media group and lemme tell ya... it’s exhausting. Impossible to keep everyone happy and even the conversations you enjoy having are work and become a hassle because it’s impossible to keep up with every single one. That’s part of the reason I ended up here I think. Was looking for something fresh and new to dive in to.

Major props to all the mods, tourney directors, and @Tommy

I have been on a ton of forums over the years and this one runs like a top compared to most. Well done.

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RainmanTrail said:
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.

Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.

What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?

Initially, I created Chip Donkeys as a fun technical project while I was on paternity leave because I had some extra time and thought it would be a small fun place to hang out with some friends online, mostly local to the bay area, and would be a fun project for me to learn some web development skills. I never took it too seriously, or at least didn't intend to; hence the name "Chip Donkeys". From a technical perspective, it was a lot of fun to build. I learned a lot about how to set up a forum, what things look like under the hood, and all the work that goes into keeping this updated, setting up mail servers, setting permissions, setting up galleries, user groups, admins, how to identify when a banned user tries to create new accounts, etc. etc. That stuff was a lot of fun to build. What I didn't anticipate though, and perhaps rather ignorantly, was bergs & crew wanting to find themselves a new home, especially one which I had created given our history. I had heard he was starting his own website, so I thought it was odd he'd want to crash mine. Anyhow, it didn't matter initially, because he wasn't allowed on the site anyhow. But all of his friends started joining and posting and harassing me daily to let him join. I was literally hounded by them daily and eventually, out of exhaustion, I gave in and allowed him limited access. That was a mistake.

There were a lot of people with hurt feelings back then surrounding the boat chip group buys (though I was never one of them) which is what caused most of the traffic heading to CD. Many people felt as though they couldn't discuss what happened with the GB here because mentions of it were not allowed publicly for some period of time, so they were looking for another outlet to learn about and discuss what happened. I thought transparency was the way to go. I thought letting adults be adults with pretty much the only rule being "no shitting on others" would make for a great discussion landscape. In some ways it worked, but ultimately, I learned that sometimes people are just shitty, and that it's a lot of work to have to run around wiping other grown-up's asses all the time. Several of the threads turned into huge GB food fights with people slinging shit from both sides of the fence. I wasn't in on the boat chip group buys, so a lot of people naturally assumed I was "on the side of the have-nots", perhaps because I had started the website, but I tried to remain neutral about the whole thing and truthfully, I usually found myself siding with the views expressed by those who were actually in the GB more often than I found myself siding with those who were left out of it, although there were certainly some exceptions to that, mostly with respect to those who were clearly attempting to obfuscate the facts. But I didn't have any issues with private group buys being done and people wanting to keep them private. Makes perfect sense to me. If you can score some Paulsons, do it. Ask some friends to join you. Well done. I don't really care to rehash all of various viewpoints/topics that were being discussed back then, but I bring it up because watching all the bickering back and forth was extremely taxing and it was wearing on me quickly. What started out as a fun technical project was quickly turning into an adult babysitting project where I was constantly having to deal with shit slinging left and right from both sides of the fence. It got old, and it got old very fast.

The biggest lessons I learned though, is that I was wrong about @Tommy and the mods here. I wasn't a fan of the moderating that was taking place, and I thought moderating the forums at CD wouldn't be that big of a deal. I figured we'd just clean up a few random posts here or there, tell people not to shit on each other, and all would just work itself out and that we could just let everyone speak openly about anything and everything they wanted. LOL. Looking back, I was pretty ignorant. Moderating these forums is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK! And it's work that really sucks having to do. It really does feel like changing people's diapers. Grown-up's diapers. It's just way too much work to go through and edit people's posts, respond to the criticism for editing said posts, etc. It's just an endless cycle. It's just so much easier to delete turd posts and tell people to stop dropping turds or they'll get banned. And to follow up on those ban threats. Add on top of that all the PMs you have to answer as the owner of the site about anything and everything, even from people you really like (and from a few you don't), and it just became extremely overwhelming. Everyone has an idea about how to run the website, and they all have different opinions. Some people get offended when their ideas don't get adopted, others don't. Countless people chime in with ideas about who should be banned, who should be allowed back in, which 'like' button we should add next, what font size they would prefer on their screens, what font color they want, whether auctions should be allowed or not, whether or not they can run a group buy, asking for permission for them to post x, y, or z, people posting NSFW pics as their avatars, people constantly criticizing your decisions to edit posts where some asshole called another asshole an asshole, people threatening other people, people getting mad at you for editing messages where asshole A threatened nice person B, people getting mad at you because nice person C is getting picked on by asshole D and nobody is doing anything about it, and on and on and on. It's a lot of work. Some of these conversations really suck to have to go through, read, and respond to. You guys have NO IDEA the flood of nonsense that Tommy unquestionably has to deal with on a daily basis. But even the good conversations with the people I really like became overwhelming. I just couldn't get through them all. I was constantly overwhelmed with the website and it was something I never really anticipated. I had just become a new father at the time, and it got to a point where the website was taking up way too much of my time and after I returned back to work from being on paternity leave, I just couldn't do it any longer. It didn't take long before I realized that what I had created was a huge mistake, at least from the perspective of me running it. I think it would be fun to build a site for someone else, I did enjoy the technical aspect, but running things is a whole different ball game that I wasn't prepared for and would never do again. Which is a good thing, because if I were to, the ban hammers would come down so fast that there wouldn't be anyone left.

This forum is by far the most lenient forum I've ever encountered. The fact that there are only a few banned members here is pretty remarkable. Most forums wouldn't put up with half the shit that people here get away with, myself included. Creating an environment that is open and welcoming to everyone is critical for any forum to succeed. Guys like bergs are an absolute cancer to a web forum. The idea that this community has suffered in any way whatsoever by his absence is laughable. A funny joke or two here or there can be fun to read, but it's almost always at someone else's expense, and those quickly tally up. The number of members that someone like him chases away is difficult to exaggerate, and you'd never know about them unless you were an admin or someone paying extremely close attention. People pop their head to check things out, then they get shit on by someone like bergs and then they leave and never come back (or only come back for the classifieds). The bergs crew terrorized CT, they terrorized PCF, and they terrorized CD. Banning bergs was the best decision Tommy ever made for this site IMO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with me on that (though I don't want to put words in his mouth). I never really had any major issues with JButler. Sure, he enjoyed trolling people, but I never felt like he was an asshole to me, and he usually stopped short of being an asshole to others while trolling, and there were even a few times where he was extremely helpful to me in offering some advice when he really didn't need to and didn't have much incentive to.

At first, I had a lot of spare time because I was off work with paternity leave and my daughter was sleeping 18+ hours per day. But after I went back to work and the website really started picking up steam (there were over 20,000 posts after just the first couple months), things started to really spiral out of control for me time wise. I was working full time and it would take me at least 2 hours per night just to follow up with people and respond to PMs. With only a few hours per night with my new baby girl to begin with, this just wasn't sustainable. I just couldn't devote 2 hours to a website every night. Time with my family was my priority. Adding moderators helps somewhat, but there is still only so much they can do. Much of the demands that the site needs really have to be done by an administrator. Somethings can be put into cruise control once they've been set up, but overall, the work never ends. If there's only one takeaway from my post, let it be this: @Tommy does a pretty damn great job here overall, and if you guys want to show your appreciation, then sign up as a "supporting member" and thank him in the forums, NOT via PMs :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: (my words, not his). If you have some stupid ass question, please think twice next time before sending it. If you think you'd prefer a different font size, then please, for the love of Zeus, change the damn font on your screen and don't bug the admin or mods. Leave them alone and let them have a life please lol. They ALL do a great job here, and they deserve our gratitude. It's a difficult, time consuming, and less than thankless job.

What happened to the community?

As far as what happened to the "community", it's a combination of several things in my opinion, all of which were pretty easy to predict. It's just how markets work and what happens when people get their feelings hurt.

1) This community has grown by quite a bit over the years. That's a good thing overall, but it also has consequences that many of the long time members may not like. As the rate of posts with titles like "My chips are filthy, is there a way to clean these?" increases, it becomes exponentially less rewarding to respond to them for those of us who have seen it already 100 times (unless your name is @BGinGA, bless his heart). Nothing against the new members making these sorts of posts, this community is here to help and almost alway will, and all of us were new at some point, but as the community expands, these types of posts can begin to drown out some of the more interesting threads. And the interesting threads, instead of becoming more prevalent, just turn into longer and longer threads. Then people start derailing those extremely long threads and it takes FOREVER just to read through them (hell, this is going on night #3 for me just to get through this thread and respond to it). Long threads get longer and are more difficult to get through when the community grows. More and more posts become newer members asking, "what is the NAGB?" and people then start reexplaining stuff to them, and it just gets old for those of us who have been around for it all. Again, nothing wrong with asking questions, but as the community grows, the interesting content just becomes harder to find and it takes longer to get through.

2) Chip Room sales, flippers, and flip-bashers - Chip Room sales have had a drastic effect on overall market prices over the years. Each time a new casino gets bought out and the chips drop, it has a very significant and measurable effect on the market. That's just basic economics. When the valuations of everyone's collections grow or shrink, people are going to be affected by it. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone here is well off, and what might seem like small fluctuations in the market prices to some can be large fluctuations to others. Everyone has a number for what they'd sell their grail sets for whether they admit it or not, and when markets change, chips will change hands more quickly. Again, that's just basic economics. When this happens, some people get butt hurt. They start throwing stones, calling people "flippers", etc. Sometimes people are going through some serious shit storms in life and they don't feel like discussing it publicly and don't need to get shit on for liquidating their assets at market prices when they're trying to raise a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on after blowing through their 401k to pay for their wife's chemotherapy. They don't need someone on their high horse slinging mud at them for buying a rack of chips for $200 and later reselling them for $220 because the market has adjusted. Sometimes people just need the benefit of the doubt and need to be extended kindness. But all the "flipper" bashing that goes on here just drives people away as well. And when I say "drives people away", I'm mostly referring to the forums, not the classifieds. There are a ton of people who get pushed out of the "community", but who remain subscribed to the classifieds and now pretty much only participate there.

3) The boat chips group buy - Fairly or unfairly, this had a pretty drastic affect on the community overall. As the guy who started Chip Donkeys and as someone who had several friends on the "inside" of the group buy, I probably saw first hand how much of an effect this had on the community as a whole as much as or more than just about anyone. My inbox at Chip Donkeys became the "complaint box" for just about everyone who was upset about the whole ordeal. Some of their concerns were pretty valid, some were just sour grapes, but everyone has their own truth, and people were definitely pissed off about it. A lot of people. Some still are, but I'd say it's mostly water under the bridge now for most people. But it has had a DRASTIC effect on the community's interactions with one another ever since. Several people who had previously been anti-flipping vocalists were now seen flipping chips, and it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. Everyone inside the GB started getting lumped together, often receiving labels they didn't deserve, and they couldn't wash themselves of those labels no matter how hard they tried. So in turn, it changed the way they now addressed/approached the community as well. I've watched as people who previously never flipped chips before eventually get to a point where they just threw their hands up in the air and basically said, "ah fuck it", feeling defeated after getting falsely accused of flipping chips over and over despite them constantly either breaking even or taking a bath on most of their prior sales. Now, they want market prices. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but it's all part of the ripple effect that the GB caused. I've also watched several smaller cliques forming since the GB happened. PM deals have gotten more prevalent among some, and everyone's "I won't sell chips to you or you or you" lists have gotten longer. It's just what happens when lines get drawn and divisions get made. Personally, I was never upset at all about being left out of any of the group buys, and I can't really claim to fully understand the feelings of those who took being left out so painfully, perhaps because I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum (my nickname is "Rainman" for a reason lol), but I certainly watched it transpire and I probably saw it's full affect first hand more so than anyone else. It deeply hurt a lot of people to be left out, and it created divisions that will never be fully repaired. It is what it is.

4) BTP chips & SB chips - I don't know or care all that much about the drama surrounding these later Paulson buys, but it's definitely had an effect on the market/community as well. Perhaps it's just driven more wedges into the divides from the previous Paulson buys, but the divisions are present either way. Nice new Paulsons entering the market will apparently always piss some percentage of the community off and make some other percentage of the community tremendously grateful. It's sorta strange from my viewpoint though, because the only people who seem to be pissed off about these buys are the ones who either can't or don't want to pay the premiums that high end minty Paulson sets demand anyhow. Meanwhile, the introduction of all these newer "high end" sets entering the market has actually driven down the prices of almost all of the nice old school THC sets like LCOs, Empress, Palais des Congres, Outposts, Emerald Princess, Aztars, and others. These are some FANTASTIC sets that you can get your hands on now for some pretty great prices as a result of all these minty Paulsons hitting the market. Old school leaded THC sets with shaped inlays! Personally, I'd rather have any of these old school sets than most of the GB chips that go for 3x their prices anyhow. All the people bitching about GB chip prices should be thanking them for lowering the prices of the stuff they're actually buying IMO.

5) The economy - Overall, people have more expendable income now than ever before. It has had a very strong effect on every hobby, not just ours. Even baseball card prices have gone through the roof over the past few years. Markets change, and our hobby is a free market whether you like it or not. If everyone acknowledged that and started respecting each other's chip collections for whatever the market says they're worth instead of for what they want to pay for them, we could all separate the financial aspect of things from community and just get along. But I guess that's a pipe dream. But if I want chips from someone, I have zero problems with whoever I'm buying them from having made a profit by selling them to me. I don't care what they paid for them. I care what they're worth, and if I want them badly enough, I'll often gladly overpay. To each their own.

6) The combination of everything - Communities evolve over time. It's just natural. The chipping world is no different. The landscape of members is very different today from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago, let alone 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Add into that the current political divisions in this country, and everyone is on edge already.
Click to expand...

Travis...so much text and you did not find a way to mention the PCA's... i'm disappointed





j/k great read...still miss CD
 
Josh Kifer said:
I personally always had a great time with Bergs. A lot of bets on the cowboys and sarcasm, but this statement is dead on. I loved both of them, but Jesus, some days.....
Click to expand...
There are some things where you have to take the bad with the good, Bergs was like that, helped me out with a GB side-deal gone bad (for me) on CT many years ago......so i owe him, but it was like water off a ducks back to him. lol....Onya Bergs.....oh yeh..... loved that Dunes set he had.
 
RainmanTrail said:
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.

Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.

What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?

Initially, I created Chip Donkeys as a fun technical project while I was on paternity leave because I had some extra time and thought it would be a small fun place to hang out with some friends online, mostly local to the bay area, and would be a fun project for me to learn some web development skills. I never took it too seriously, or at least didn't intend to; hence the name "Chip Donkeys". From a technical perspective, it was a lot of fun to build. I learned a lot about how to set up a forum, what things look like under the hood, and all the work that goes into keeping this updated, setting up mail servers, setting permissions, setting up galleries, user groups, admins, how to identify when a banned user tries to create new accounts, etc. etc. That stuff was a lot of fun to build. What I didn't anticipate though, and perhaps rather ignorantly, was bergs & crew wanting to find themselves a new home, especially one which I had created given our history. I had heard he was starting his own website, so I thought it was odd he'd want to crash mine. Anyhow, it didn't matter initially, because he wasn't allowed on the site anyhow. But all of his friends started joining and posting and harassing me daily to let him join. I was literally hounded by them daily and eventually, out of exhaustion, I gave in and allowed him limited access. That was a mistake.

There were a lot of people with hurt feelings back then surrounding the boat chip group buys (though I was never one of them) which is what caused most of the traffic heading to CD. Many people felt as though they couldn't discuss what happened with the GB here because mentions of it were not allowed publicly for some period of time, so they were looking for another outlet to learn about and discuss what happened. I thought transparency was the way to go. I thought letting adults be adults with pretty much the only rule being "no shitting on others" would make for a great discussion landscape. In some ways it worked, but ultimately, I learned that sometimes people are just shitty, and that it's a lot of work to have to run around wiping other grown-up's asses all the time. Several of the threads turned into huge GB food fights with people slinging shit from both sides of the fence. I wasn't in on the boat chip group buys, so a lot of people naturally assumed I was "on the side of the have-nots", perhaps because I had started the website, but I tried to remain neutral about the whole thing and truthfully, I usually found myself siding with the views expressed by those who were actually in the GB more often than I found myself siding with those who were left out of it, although there were certainly some exceptions to that, mostly with respect to those who were clearly attempting to obfuscate the facts. But I didn't have any issues with private group buys being done and people wanting to keep them private. Makes perfect sense to me. If you can score some Paulsons, do it. Ask some friends to join you. Well done. I don't really care to rehash all of various viewpoints/topics that were being discussed back then, but I bring it up because watching all the bickering back and forth was extremely taxing and it was wearing on me quickly. What started out as a fun technical project was quickly turning into an adult babysitting project where I was constantly having to deal with shit slinging left and right from both sides of the fence. It got old, and it got old very fast.

The biggest lessons I learned though, is that I was wrong about @Tommy and the mods here. I wasn't a fan of the moderating that was taking place, and I thought moderating the forums at CD wouldn't be that big of a deal. I figured we'd just clean up a few random posts here or there, tell people not to shit on each other, and all would just work itself out and that we could just let everyone speak openly about anything and everything they wanted. LOL. Looking back, I was pretty ignorant. Moderating these forums is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK! And it's work that really sucks having to do. It really does feel like changing people's diapers. Grown-up's diapers. It's just way too much work to go through and edit people's posts, respond to the criticism for editing said posts, etc. It's just an endless cycle. It's just so much easier to delete turd posts and tell people to stop dropping turds or they'll get banned. And to follow up on those ban threats. Add on top of that all the PMs you have to answer as the owner of the site about anything and everything, even from people you really like (and from a few you don't), and it just became extremely overwhelming. Everyone has an idea about how to run the website, and they all have different opinions. Some people get offended when their ideas don't get adopted, others don't. Countless people chime in with ideas about who should be banned, who should be allowed back in, which 'like' button we should add next, what font size they would prefer on their screens, what font color they want, whether auctions should be allowed or not, whether or not they can run a group buy, asking for permission for them to post x, y, or z, people posting NSFW pics as their avatars, people constantly criticizing your decisions to edit posts where some asshole called another asshole an asshole, people threatening other people, people getting mad at you for editing messages where asshole A threatened nice person B, people getting mad at you because nice person C is getting picked on by asshole D and nobody is doing anything about it, and on and on and on. It's a lot of work. Some of these conversations really suck to have to go through, read, and respond to. You guys have NO IDEA the flood of nonsense that Tommy unquestionably has to deal with on a daily basis. But even the good conversations with the people I really like became overwhelming. I just couldn't get through them all. I was constantly overwhelmed with the website and it was something I never really anticipated. I had just become a new father at the time, and it got to a point where the website was taking up way too much of my time and after I returned back to work from being on paternity leave, I just couldn't do it any longer. It didn't take long before I realized that what I had created was a huge mistake, at least from the perspective of me running it. I think it would be fun to build a site for someone else, I did enjoy the technical aspect, but running things is a whole different ball game that I wasn't prepared for and would never do again. Which is a good thing, because if I were to, the ban hammers would come down so fast that there wouldn't be anyone left.

This forum is by far the most lenient forum I've ever encountered. The fact that there are only a few banned members here is pretty remarkable. Most forums wouldn't put up with half the shit that people here get away with, myself included. Creating an environment that is open and welcoming to everyone is critical for any forum to succeed. Guys like bergs are an absolute cancer to a web forum. The idea that this community has suffered in any way whatsoever by his absence is laughable. A funny joke or two here or there can be fun to read, but it's almost always at someone else's expense, and those quickly tally up. The number of members that someone like him chases away is difficult to exaggerate, and you'd never know about them unless you were an admin or someone paying extremely close attention. People pop their head to check things out, then they get shit on by someone like bergs and then they leave and never come back (or only come back for the classifieds). The bergs crew terrorized CT, they terrorized PCF, and they terrorized CD. Banning bergs was the best decision Tommy ever made for this site IMO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with me on that (though I don't want to put words in his mouth). I never really had any major issues with JButler. Sure, he enjoyed trolling people, but I never felt like he was an asshole to me, and he usually stopped short of being an asshole to others while trolling, and there were even a few times where he was extremely helpful to me in offering some advice when he really didn't need to and didn't have much incentive to.

At first, I had a lot of spare time because I was off work with paternity leave and my daughter was sleeping 18+ hours per day. But after I went back to work and the website really started picking up steam (there were over 20,000 posts after just the first couple months), things started to really spiral out of control for me time wise. I was working full time and it would take me at least 2 hours per night just to follow up with people and respond to PMs. With only a few hours per night with my new baby girl to begin with, this just wasn't sustainable. I just couldn't devote 2 hours to a website every night. Time with my family was my priority. Adding moderators helps somewhat, but there is still only so much they can do. Much of the demands that the site needs really have to be done by an administrator. Somethings can be put into cruise control once they've been set up, but overall, the work never ends. If there's only one takeaway from my post, let it be this: @Tommy does a pretty damn great job here overall, and if you guys want to show your appreciation, then sign up as a "supporting member" and thank him in the forums, NOT via PMs :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: (my words, not his). If you have some stupid ass question, please think twice next time before sending it. If you think you'd prefer a different font size, then please, for the love of Zeus, change the damn font on your screen and don't bug the admin or mods. Leave them alone and let them have a life please lol. They ALL do a great job here, and they deserve our gratitude. It's a difficult, time consuming, and less than thankless job.

What happened to the community?

As far as what happened to the "community", it's a combination of several things in my opinion, all of which were pretty easy to predict. It's just how markets work and what happens when people get their feelings hurt.

1) This community has grown by quite a bit over the years. That's a good thing overall, but it also has consequences that many of the long time members may not like. As the rate of posts with titles like "My chips are filthy, is there a way to clean these?" increases, it becomes exponentially less rewarding to respond to them for those of us who have seen it already 100 times (unless your name is @BGinGA, bless his heart). Nothing against the new members making these sorts of posts, this community is here to help and almost alway will, and all of us were new at some point, but as the community expands, these types of posts can begin to drown out some of the more interesting threads. And the interesting threads, instead of becoming more prevalent, just turn into longer and longer threads. Then people start derailing those extremely long threads and it takes FOREVER just to read through them (hell, this is going on night #3 for me just to get through this thread and respond to it). Long threads get longer and are more difficult to get through when the community grows. More and more posts become newer members asking, "what is the NAGB?" and people then start reexplaining stuff to them, and it just gets old for those of us who have been around for it all. Again, nothing wrong with asking questions, but as the community grows, the interesting content just becomes harder to find and it takes longer to get through.

2) Chip Room sales, flippers, and flip-bashers - Chip Room sales have had a drastic effect on overall market prices over the years. Each time a new casino gets bought out and the chips drop, it has a very significant and measurable effect on the market. That's just basic economics. When the valuations of everyone's collections grow or shrink, people are going to be affected by it. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone here is well off, and what might seem like small fluctuations in the market prices to some can be large fluctuations to others. Everyone has a number for what they'd sell their grail sets for whether they admit it or not, and when markets change, chips will change hands more quickly. Again, that's just basic economics. When this happens, some people get butt hurt. They start throwing stones, calling people "flippers", etc. Sometimes people are going through some serious shit storms in life and they don't feel like discussing it publicly and don't need to get shit on for liquidating their assets at market prices when they're trying to raise a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on after blowing through their 401k to pay for their wife's chemotherapy. They don't need someone on their high horse slinging mud at them for buying a rack of chips for $200 and later reselling them for $220 because the market has adjusted. Sometimes people just need the benefit of the doubt and need to be extended kindness. But all the "flipper" bashing that goes on here just drives people away as well. And when I say "drives people away", I'm mostly referring to the forums, not the classifieds. There are a ton of people who get pushed out of the "community", but who remain subscribed to the classifieds and now pretty much only participate there.

3) The boat chips group buy - Fairly or unfairly, this had a pretty drastic affect on the community overall. As the guy who started Chip Donkeys and as someone who had several friends on the "inside" of the group buy, I probably saw first hand how much of an effect this had on the community as a whole as much as or more than just about anyone. My inbox at Chip Donkeys became the "complaint box" for just about everyone who was upset about the whole ordeal. Some of their concerns were pretty valid, some were just sour grapes, but everyone has their own truth, and people were definitely pissed off about it. A lot of people. Some still are, but I'd say it's mostly water under the bridge now for most people. But it has had a DRASTIC effect on the community's interactions with one another ever since. Several people who had previously been anti-flipping vocalists were now seen flipping chips, and it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. Everyone inside the GB started getting lumped together, often receiving labels they didn't deserve, and they couldn't wash themselves of those labels no matter how hard they tried. So in turn, it changed the way they now addressed/approached the community as well. I've watched as people who previously never flipped chips before eventually get to a point where they just threw their hands up in the air and basically said, "ah fuck it", feeling defeated after getting falsely accused of flipping chips over and over despite them constantly either breaking even or taking a bath on most of their prior sales. Now, they want market prices. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but it's all part of the ripple effect that the GB caused. I've also watched several smaller cliques forming since the GB happened. PM deals have gotten more prevalent among some, and everyone's "I won't sell chips to you or you or you" lists have gotten longer. It's just what happens when lines get drawn and divisions get made. Personally, I was never upset at all about being left out of any of the group buys, and I can't really claim to fully understand the feelings of those who took being left out so painfully, perhaps because I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum (my nickname is "Rainman" for a reason lol), but I certainly watched it transpire and I probably saw it's full affect first hand more so than anyone else. It deeply hurt a lot of people to be left out, and it created divisions that will never be fully repaired. It is what it is.

4) BTP chips & SB chips - I don't know or care all that much about the drama surrounding these later Paulson buys, but it's definitely had an effect on the market/community as well. Perhaps it's just driven more wedges into the divides from the previous Paulson buys, but the divisions are present either way. Nice new Paulsons entering the market will apparently always piss some percentage of the community off and make some other percentage of the community tremendously grateful. It's sorta strange from my viewpoint though, because the only people who seem to be pissed off about these buys are the ones who either can't or don't want to pay the premiums that high end minty Paulson sets demand anyhow. Meanwhile, the introduction of all these newer "high end" sets entering the market has actually driven down the prices of almost all of the nice old school THC sets like LCOs, Empress, Palais des Congres, Outposts, Emerald Princess, Aztars, and others. These are some FANTASTIC sets that you can get your hands on now for some pretty great prices as a result of all these minty Paulsons hitting the market. Old school leaded THC sets with shaped inlays! Personally, I'd rather have any of these old school sets than most of the GB chips that go for 3x their prices anyhow. All the people bitching about GB chip prices should be thanking them for lowering the prices of the stuff they're actually buying IMO.

5) The economy - Overall, people have more expendable income now than ever before. It has had a very strong effect on every hobby, not just ours. Even baseball card prices have gone through the roof over the past few years. Markets change, and our hobby is a free market whether you like it or not. If everyone acknowledged that and started respecting each other's chip collections for whatever the market says they're worth instead of for what they want to pay for them, we could all separate the financial aspect of things from community and just get along. But I guess that's a pipe dream. But if I want chips from someone, I have zero problems with whoever I'm buying them from having made a profit by selling them to me. I don't care what they paid for them. I care what they're worth, and if I want them badly enough, I'll often gladly overpay. To each their own.

6) The combination of everything - Communities evolve over time. It's just natural. The chipping world is no different. The landscape of members is very different today from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago, let alone 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Add into that the current political divisions in this country, and everyone is on edge already.
Click to expand...
Sometimes you just have to be able to “Agree to Disagree” with people. :tup:
One can never make all of the people happy all of the time and some people can never be happy any of the time.
As a whole, I find this to be mostly a great community of people. I’ve seen much more good than bad in this world of chipping we are in. :)
 
Very very well written @RainmanTrail, Travis thank you for taking the time to type out that extremely thoughtful and insightful response! I think we have all spent several hours taking bits of knowledge from this thread... your note #5 about the economy and valuation of chips sets is absolutely spot on. It applies to every aspect of collecting, cards, currency, toys...if you collect anything there is typically someone who comes up with an evaluation of that particular products worth... even legos have several sites dedicated to following the value of any set they ever produced. Why do people buy action figures to leave them in the box? They want the value to grow, doesn't mea they have the intentions of selling said product... but if someone comes along that needs that product to complete their project then they have to pay that persons asking price... or attempt to find another one. I have no issues with anyone turning a profit on chips if someone is willing to pay that price, many chips are well out of my price range it all depends how bad you want something and your determination to make it happen!

Is $1,308 an insane price for a nearly impossible to find rack of BTP fracs... to most if us absolutely! But to the correct buyer it may mean sacrificing/ selling off something else to make that dream happen for them! I understand that publically it sets a precedence for future sales.... others holding those same chips say YES cha ching!! No different than when someone needed a Ken Griffy Jr. Rookie and pays double its value... and then someone else sells the next at that price.. well the value has risen. How can you blame the 3rd owner for saying I will sell mine for that!!

THE PRY IT AWAY FACTOR! In addition with chipping, many times sets are bought and sold without proper knowledge of appropriate breakdowns. Leaving "holes" in our beloved sets... the need and desire to make that set playable is overwhelming... so in order to fill those gaps we start serching out whom owns the chips we need... of course we don't want to rebuy the chips we have... we just want what we need! The other member may be willing to hurt their set to help you out but at a cost... your set may average $1 to $1.50 per chip but for the seller to hurt their collection may say $3 a chip and you gladly pay it to make that hole disappear... then say it's ok that I over paid... now those chips that were $1.50 are now $2.25 if I spread out the over priced racks to fill in what the original owner didn't take care if when they were available. Boom increased valuation of a set! Now a future buyer has to absorb that original person's short comings to buy a ready to go playable breakdown. This is more in reference to casino used chips than sets bought my members knowing proper breakdowns and buying new... but then again how often do we see... will split if all accounted for! Another set broken into fragments that will inevitably cost money to rebuild.

All of this goes back to set your limits of what you are willing to spend and attempt to stay within that budget... most of us fail but It can be done!

Sorry for yet another poorly written book of little worth but hopefully I made a few valid points in there... i will shut up and get out of the way of important conversing now... fellow chipper Ben
 
RainmanTrail said:
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.

Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.

What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?

Initially, I created Chip Donkeys as a fun technical project while I was on paternity leave because I had some extra time and thought it would be a small fun place to hang out with some friends online, mostly local to the bay area, and would be a fun project for me to learn some web development skills. I never took it too seriously, or at least didn't intend to; hence the name "Chip Donkeys". From a technical perspective, it was a lot of fun to build. I learned a lot about how to set up a forum, what things look like under the hood, and all the work that goes into keeping this updated, setting up mail servers, setting permissions, setting up galleries, user groups, admins, how to identify when a banned user tries to create new accounts, etc. etc. That stuff was a lot of fun to build. What I didn't anticipate though, and perhaps rather ignorantly, was bergs & crew wanting to find themselves a new home, especially one which I had created given our history. I had heard he was starting his own website, so I thought it was odd he'd want to crash mine. Anyhow, it didn't matter initially, because he wasn't allowed on the site anyhow. But all of his friends started joining and posting and harassing me daily to let him join. I was literally hounded by them daily and eventually, out of exhaustion, I gave in and allowed him limited access. That was a mistake.

There were a lot of people with hurt feelings back then surrounding the boat chip group buys (though I was never one of them) which is what caused most of the traffic heading to CD. Many people felt as though they couldn't discuss what happened with the GB here because mentions of it were not allowed publicly for some period of time, so they were looking for another outlet to learn about and discuss what happened. I thought transparency was the way to go. I thought letting adults be adults with pretty much the only rule being "no shitting on others" would make for a great discussion landscape. In some ways it worked, but ultimately, I learned that sometimes people are just shitty, and that it's a lot of work to have to run around wiping other grown-up's asses all the time. Several of the threads turned into huge GB food fights with people slinging shit from both sides of the fence. I wasn't in on the boat chip group buys, so a lot of people naturally assumed I was "on the side of the have-nots", perhaps because I had started the website, but I tried to remain neutral about the whole thing and truthfully, I usually found myself siding with the views expressed by those who were actually in the GB more often than I found myself siding with those who were left out of it, although there were certainly some exceptions to that, mostly with respect to those who were clearly attempting to obfuscate the facts. But I didn't have any issues with private group buys being done and people wanting to keep them private. Makes perfect sense to me. If you can score some Paulsons, do it. Ask some friends to join you. Well done. I don't really care to rehash all of various viewpoints/topics that were being discussed back then, but I bring it up because watching all the bickering back and forth was extremely taxing and it was wearing on me quickly. What started out as a fun technical project was quickly turning into an adult babysitting project where I was constantly having to deal with shit slinging left and right from both sides of the fence. It got old, and it got old very fast.

The biggest lessons I learned though, is that I was wrong about @Tommy and the mods here. I wasn't a fan of the moderating that was taking place, and I thought moderating the forums at CD wouldn't be that big of a deal. I figured we'd just clean up a few random posts here or there, tell people not to shit on each other, and all would just work itself out and that we could just let everyone speak openly about anything and everything they wanted. LOL. Looking back, I was pretty ignorant. Moderating these forums is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK! And it's work that really sucks having to do. It really does feel like changing people's diapers. Grown-up's diapers. It's just way too much work to go through and edit people's posts, respond to the criticism for editing said posts, etc. It's just an endless cycle. It's just so much easier to delete turd posts and tell people to stop dropping turds or they'll get banned. And to follow up on those ban threats. Add on top of that all the PMs you have to answer as the owner of the site about anything and everything, even from people you really like (and from a few you don't), and it just became extremely overwhelming. Everyone has an idea about how to run the website, and they all have different opinions. Some people get offended when their ideas don't get adopted, others don't. Countless people chime in with ideas about who should be banned, who should be allowed back in, which 'like' button we should add next, what font size they would prefer on their screens, what font color they want, whether auctions should be allowed or not, whether or not they can run a group buy, asking for permission for them to post x, y, or z, people posting NSFW pics as their avatars, people constantly criticizing your decisions to edit posts where some asshole called another asshole an asshole, people threatening other people, people getting mad at you for editing messages where asshole A threatened nice person B, people getting mad at you because nice person C is getting picked on by asshole D and nobody is doing anything about it, and on and on and on. It's a lot of work. Some of these conversations really suck to have to go through, read, and respond to. You guys have NO IDEA the flood of nonsense that Tommy unquestionably has to deal with on a daily basis. But even the good conversations with the people I really like became overwhelming. I just couldn't get through them all. I was constantly overwhelmed with the website and it was something I never really anticipated. I had just become a new father at the time, and it got to a point where the website was taking up way too much of my time and after I returned back to work from being on paternity leave, I just couldn't do it any longer. It didn't take long before I realized that what I had created was a huge mistake, at least from the perspective of me running it. I think it would be fun to build a site for someone else, I did enjoy the technical aspect, but running things is a whole different ball game that I wasn't prepared for and would never do again. Which is a good thing, because if I were to, the ban hammers would come down so fast that there wouldn't be anyone left.

This forum is by far the most lenient forum I've ever encountered. The fact that there are only a few banned members here is pretty remarkable. Most forums wouldn't put up with half the shit that people here get away with, myself included. Creating an environment that is open and welcoming to everyone is critical for any forum to succeed. Guys like bergs are an absolute cancer to a web forum. The idea that this community has suffered in any way whatsoever by his absence is laughable. A funny joke or two here or there can be fun to read, but it's almost always at someone else's expense, and those quickly tally up. The number of members that someone like him chases away is difficult to exaggerate, and you'd never know about them unless you were an admin or someone paying extremely close attention. People pop their head to check things out, then they get shit on by someone like bergs and then they leave and never come back (or only come back for the classifieds). The bergs crew terrorized CT, they terrorized PCF, and they terrorized CD. Banning bergs was the best decision Tommy ever made for this site IMO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with me on that (though I don't want to put words in his mouth). I never really had any major issues with JButler. Sure, he enjoyed trolling people, but I never felt like he was an asshole to me, and he usually stopped short of being an asshole to others while trolling, and there were even a few times where he was extremely helpful to me in offering some advice when he really didn't need to and didn't have much incentive to.

At first, I had a lot of spare time because I was off work with paternity leave and my daughter was sleeping 18+ hours per day. But after I went back to work and the website really started picking up steam (there were over 20,000 posts after just the first couple months), things started to really spiral out of control for me time wise. I was working full time and it would take me at least 2 hours per night just to follow up with people and respond to PMs. With only a few hours per night with my new baby girl to begin with, this just wasn't sustainable. I just couldn't devote 2 hours to a website every night. Time with my family was my priority. Adding moderators helps somewhat, but there is still only so much they can do. Much of the demands that the site needs really have to be done by an administrator. Somethings can be put into cruise control once they've been set up, but overall, the work never ends. If there's only one takeaway from my post, let it be this: @Tommy does a pretty damn great job here overall, and if you guys want to show your appreciation, then sign up as a "supporting member" and thank him in the forums, NOT via PMs :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: (my words, not his). If you have some stupid ass question, please think twice next time before sending it. If you think you'd prefer a different font size, then please, for the love of Zeus, change the damn font on your screen and don't bug the admin or mods. Leave them alone and let them have a life please lol. They ALL do a great job here, and they deserve our gratitude. It's a difficult, time consuming, and less than thankless job.

What happened to the community?

As far as what happened to the "community", it's a combination of several things in my opinion, all of which were pretty easy to predict. It's just how markets work and what happens when people get their feelings hurt.

1) This community has grown by quite a bit over the years. That's a good thing overall, but it also has consequences that many of the long time members may not like. As the rate of posts with titles like "My chips are filthy, is there a way to clean these?" increases, it becomes exponentially less rewarding to respond to them for those of us who have seen it already 100 times (unless your name is @BGinGA, bless his heart). Nothing against the new members making these sorts of posts, this community is here to help and almost alway will, and all of us were new at some point, but as the community expands, these types of posts can begin to drown out some of the more interesting threads. And the interesting threads, instead of becoming more prevalent, just turn into longer and longer threads. Then people start derailing those extremely long threads and it takes FOREVER just to read through them (hell, this is going on night #3 for me just to get through this thread and respond to it). Long threads get longer and are more difficult to get through when the community grows. More and more posts become newer members asking, "what is the NAGB?" and people then start reexplaining stuff to them, and it just gets old for those of us who have been around for it all. Again, nothing wrong with asking questions, but as the community grows, the interesting content just becomes harder to find and it takes longer to get through.

2) Chip Room sales, flippers, and flip-bashers - Chip Room sales have had a drastic effect on overall market prices over the years. Each time a new casino gets bought out and the chips drop, it has a very significant and measurable effect on the market. That's just basic economics. When the valuations of everyone's collections grow or shrink, people are going to be affected by it. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone here is well off, and what might seem like small fluctuations in the market prices to some can be large fluctuations to others. Everyone has a number for what they'd sell their grail sets for whether they admit it or not, and when markets change, chips will change hands more quickly. Again, that's just basic economics. When this happens, some people get butt hurt. They start throwing stones, calling people "flippers", etc. Sometimes people are going through some serious shit storms in life and they don't feel like discussing it publicly and don't need to get shit on for liquidating their assets at market prices when they're trying to raise a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on after blowing through their 401k to pay for their wife's chemotherapy. They don't need someone on their high horse slinging mud at them for buying a rack of chips for $200 and later reselling them for $220 because the market has adjusted. Sometimes people just need the benefit of the doubt and need to be extended kindness. But all the "flipper" bashing that goes on here just drives people away as well. And when I say "drives people away", I'm mostly referring to the forums, not the classifieds. There are a ton of people who get pushed out of the "community", but who remain subscribed to the classifieds and now pretty much only participate there.

3) The boat chips group buy - Fairly or unfairly, this had a pretty drastic affect on the community overall. As the guy who started Chip Donkeys and as someone who had several friends on the "inside" of the group buy, I probably saw first hand how much of an effect this had on the community as a whole as much as or more than just about anyone. My inbox at Chip Donkeys became the "complaint box" for just about everyone who was upset about the whole ordeal. Some of their concerns were pretty valid, some were just sour grapes, but everyone has their own truth, and people were definitely pissed off about it. A lot of people. Some still are, but I'd say it's mostly water under the bridge now for most people. But it has had a DRASTIC effect on the community's interactions with one another ever since. Several people who had previously been anti-flipping vocalists were now seen flipping chips, and it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. Everyone inside the GB started getting lumped together, often receiving labels they didn't deserve, and they couldn't wash themselves of those labels no matter how hard they tried. So in turn, it changed the way they now addressed/approached the community as well. I've watched as people who previously never flipped chips before eventually get to a point where they just threw their hands up in the air and basically said, "ah fuck it", feeling defeated after getting falsely accused of flipping chips over and over despite them constantly either breaking even or taking a bath on most of their prior sales. Now, they want market prices. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but it's all part of the ripple effect that the GB caused. I've also watched several smaller cliques forming since the GB happened. PM deals have gotten more prevalent among some, and everyone's "I won't sell chips to you or you or you" lists have gotten longer. It's just what happens when lines get drawn and divisions get made. Personally, I was never upset at all about being left out of any of the group buys, and I can't really claim to fully understand the feelings of those who took being left out so painfully, perhaps because I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum (my nickname is "Rainman" for a reason lol), but I certainly watched it transpire and I probably saw it's full affect first hand more so than anyone else. It deeply hurt a lot of people to be left out, and it created divisions that will never be fully repaired. It is what it is.
Click to expand...

I have no doubt that being a mod isn’t as easy as most people think, but a lot of this post is revisionist history.

First, I’d like to agree that in many threads, there was a lot of GB bashing, this is true. But imho it was needed at the time, because there were so many people frustrated with how things were going on here, and you couldn’t openly talk about it.

Secondly, I’m not sure who you’re referring to as ”crew” in “Bergs and Crew”, but as far as I know, other than Bergs, you never had a problem with anyone else from our group. In fact, I’d say the fantasy drafts with Bergs, Butler, Podo, and myself, were huge hits, which provided good positive content and drew a lot of people to CD. Let’s be honest, youve always had an over the top hatred of Bergs, I know he’s gone off on you in the past, but you need to get over it dude. You know they say holding grudges is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die from it. Let it go dude.

Thirdly, the doxing incident was completely out of line. You used a persons private email and IP address to deduce that they were a police officer in Missouri near (not in) Ferguson, and outed them. Regardless of their opinions (and I don’t recall anything racist, even though I disagreed with nearly everything they were saying), this was way way way out of line. And when you got called out on it by pretty much everyone, you threw a temper tantrum. I tried to whitewash it earlier because it’s in the past, but if you’re going to misrepresent what happened I’ll set the record straight. It was completely unprofessional and uncalled for, and I still haven’t seen you own up to it or apologize.

You do make some very good points with the rest of your post, and I do think you’re a valuable member of the community, but I think you see everything as good or evil, and you try to rationalize things and pigeonhole them into one category or the other, but life isn’t that simple. There’s good and bad in almost everything and everybody dude.
 
I do appreciate the well written perspective from @RainmanTrail and find it especially interesting as so many of the negative aspects that he focuses on, I barely remember. If you asked me to describe the Chip Donkey experience, I mostly remember AMA's and Fantasy drafts which I thought were incredibly fun and inclusive of everyone. Yes, there were more arguments over NAGB's and boat chips on CD, but thats only because those conversations were allowed over there, while being censored over here. I feel like the site would have been successful had travis elected to keep it open, but I also dont blame him for walking away.

Its important to note that CD came at a time when people needed it, just as PCF had done previously for the Chiptalk community. Its really the same story, and whats shouldnt be overlooked is that Butler, Bergs, Courage, Bginga etc. all played a big part in the CT exodus to PCF. At that time it was @BGinGA trolling Ten with avatars and free speech, while getting banned for possibly the stupidest reason of all time.

I know Bergs in person, have met BG a few times, never met rainman, but have shared many of PMS, and they are all the same people. They can have abrasive online personalities, but seem nothing like that person in real life. I think they are all great contributors and we all lose, when they aren't part of the cipping community.
 
ssanel54 said:
I do appreciate the well written perspective from @RainmanTrail and find it especially interesting as so many of the negative aspects that he focuses on, I barely remember. If you asked me to describe the Chip Donkey experience, I mostly remember AMA's and Fantasy drafts which I thought were incredibly fun and inclusive of everyone. Yes, there were more arguments over NAGB's and boat chips on CD, but thats only because those conversations were allowed over there, while being censored over here. I feel like the site would have been successful had travis elected to keep it open, but I also dont blame him for walking away.

Its important to note that CD came at a time when people needed it, just as PCF had done previously for the Chiptalk community. Its really the same story, and whats shouldnt be overlooked is that Butler, Bergs, Courage, Bginga etc. all played a big part in the CT exodus to PCF. At that time it was @BGinGA trolling Ten with avatars and free speech, while getting banned for possibly the stupidest reason of all time.

I know Bergs in person, have met BG a few times, never met rainman, but have shared many of PMS, and they are all the same people. They can have abrasive online personalities, but seem nothing like that person in real life. I think they are all great contributors and we all lose, when they aren't part of the cipping community.
Click to expand...

I 100% agree Scott
 
Reading this thread with interest. I'm finding much with which to agree, and much with which to disagree. Some things I've found deeply offensive -- namely some bullshit about some unidentified jerk, and the unconfirmed presumption that he's a "cop" from Ferguson, MO. (Says a lot about what the writer thinks of American law enforcement.)

As a vendor, I can offer this:

Please do not assume that vendors here are getting rich from selling casino chips. My own business, since its start eight years ago, still hasn't reached a "break-even" point. Some of us do this because we love what this community is, and we love the chips.

And, if you get something from being here, look for a way to give back. Set a goal -- answer a new member question every week or every month, be generous with likes, do a contest or a giveaway. Make it fun. It's supposed to be fun.
 
I think there’s been a lot of good, well written responses here, that have covered a lot of the reasons for the changes in the community and the market. I don’t want to rehash all of them, but do want to add one more.
Simply, some members have left, never came back, and took their chips with them. I lurked on CT back in 07’, then joined in 08’. During that time, if there was a set that really caught your eye, you wouldn’t have to wait that long to purchase it (Vineyards,Olivia’s, Spotted Aztars, anything, etc.). At the time, there were a lot of members that cycled through sets, and were constantly buying and selling. Eventually, those sets found homes, and stuck. Some members are still here but not selling, just hoarding (not to be taken negatively, I’m one, as I thought I would never own 13 sets, and have only sold one during my time chipping).
Many others left for various reasons, and they took their chips with them. The sets may just be sitting closets, or could have been sold to non-members. Those sets have left the community and thus when they rarely pop up, will command a premium price. I know they are not everyone’s cup of tea, but when is the last time a set of Olivia’s were available? Could you imagine the premium they would command today, if a decent set came up for auction? There have been many factors affecting the market, but some members leaving and removing their sets from the market is another factor.
For me personally, there was too much drama post NAGB. I was never a huge poster, but did have my own “Life of Pisces” thread, and tried to put a lot live stack prOn in it. Once all the drama started, I really didn’t want to be a part of it. I had no hard feelings, but getting into online squabbling is really not my thing.
I will say that being part of the community has been great! I’ve met a lot of great local members. We’ve created a great local community, with games pretty much every Saturday, if you want to play. We currently have/had every Saturday booked from January 3rd through the first weekend of March! We pretty much communicate daily via text, and I couldn’t imagine a better group of guys to share this hobby with!
I’ve met several members at the chip convention the last 3 years, enjoying meals, playing cards, and shooting some craps with other PCFers. I’ve attended meet-ups, chopped rooms with members, and got to know people better away from the hobby. Overall, being here has been positive for my growth in this hobby, my poker game, and my personal life. Inevitably, all things will change. It’s really the only constant in life. All we can control is how we respond to it, and the attitude we take approaching it.
I wish I could go to all the meet-ups (damn work!!). I’ve happy for the members that I have had the pleasure to interact with, and look forward to meeting many more!
-Andy
 
RainmanTrail said:
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.

Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.

What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing, Travis.

There was a lot of speculation at the time about what was going on, but there's nothing better than hearing it straight from the source.

Again, thank you. Your comments are illuminating.
 

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