Award cycle about to begin

It is time for me to start thinking about next year’s Numismatic Ambassador Awards. These are given to individuals who are the selfless volunteers who make the organized hobby function, from setting up bourse tables at a local VFW Hall show to overseeing regional and national hobby functions like club National Coin Week activities.

There is no set of strict criteria. Numismatic News founded the award in 1974 on the principle that it takes one to know one. We take nominations from anybody. We create hobby biographies from these nominations. We prepare a ballot that is then sent out to current holders of Ambassador Awards for them to vote on the next annual class of winners. The top vote getters are the winners.

This process works wonderfully well, because it is both self generating and self policing by the grass roots of the hobby.

It has been my privilege to give Ambassador Awards to hobbyists of widely varying backgrounds. I look forward to giving many more.

So start thinking of who you want to nominate for an award. The formal call in the print edition of Numismatic News will be in the Nov. 20 issue. There is a nominating form that will help you along in your thought process. I will have the form posted on www.numismaticnews.net when the formal call for nominations is ready in a few days.

Put your thinking caps on and get a name or two in mind. Without grass-roots input there would be no award winners and, even if there were, the awards so given would have much less meaning.