Ultimately, responsibility rests with coin collectors

Are you a member of a coin club?

You should be.

At the very least, you should be a member of the national collector organization, the American Numismatic Association.

I cannot tell you the number of times that coin collectors have written me over the past 40 years to say “someone should do something about it.”

The “it” in question changes over time, but it is usually a current problem.

Who is the somebody?

It has to be collectors working together.

How do they do that?

They join collector organizations.

Unfortunately, those who write me often fail to make the connection.

There is no unnamed great benefactor who will swoop in to solve their problems for them.

Only collectors working together can do that.

What has set me down this topic path this morning is I have received the results of the Central States Numismatic Society election.

This is a major regional organization located in the Midwest.

The new president ran unopposed. He received 614 votes.

The winner of the vice presidency, which was a contested race, garnered 348 members to put him over the top.

Central States is a well known voice for the hobby that has existed since 1939. Yet just a few hundred people are making important decisions about leadership.

Total votes cast was 755.

To these few collector voters, I offer a big “well done.”

The hopes of hundreds of thousands of collectors who live in the geographical area of Central States rest on the actions of so few.

It is a big responsibility to be a leader of Central States.

I wish good luck to all of them.

But more collectors need to join the organization.

I will post a link at the end of this blog to take you to the Central States website.

In the meantime, good luck to Mitch Ernst as new president and Brett Irick as vice president.

The 10 members who won seats on the board of governors are as follows with their vote totals:

Robert Fanger – 432

Mike Curran – 419

David Nazzaro – 413

Brad Karoleff – 401

Andy Kimmel – 385

Lynn Armstrong – 381

Greg Oglesby – 369

Samuel Ernst – 356

George Cuhaj – 353

Larry Schneider – 350

Wish them well. But know they would be more effective if they led an organization with more active collector members.

Consider joining if you do not belong.

Don’t wait until you believe something ought to be done about a problem. At that point, it is too late.

The American Numismatic Association can be found at this link.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog for the third time in 2017 . He is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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