Hi.. I'm a member of a local coin club here in India... It is the only coin club around here.. and has been running for about 25 years.. But suddenly, there has been problems... The meetings and discussions are marred by the ego clash of two veterans.. Its frustrating particularly because one of those persons is our honorable club president himself. Another thing is, every meeting is followed by an auction. But, now it has lost its charm... just because one of our members (of course a veteran) has monopolized it and no one else is ready to put items for auction. Evenif somebody is ready to put items for auction, they will somehow make sure that the seller does not get the expected value.. New members are hard to come by now... Most of the members are 60+ and only a handful including me belong to the 30+ class.. There are only a couple of collectors in the range of 25 to 30 years.. Is there any way (simple but effective) to make things better?..
Wow I would have thought with a description like that, with the egos, the ages, you were describing an American coin club. Hmmph, nothing is different around the world I guess.
It is sad when a chosen few believe they have the right to run the entire show. Are there any by-laws written for the club you are now in? I do not know what this club is using as by-laws, but I would think there could be a provision about the right to have someone voted out of the club because they are troublemakers and are not willing to share. I can tell it would be close to impossible to do so as your younger members are so out-numbered. Have you considered meeting with the younger members at a different time and try to start your own coin club? Maybe there are other young collectors who share your feelings, and even youngsters who might join a club if they were not so intimidated or treated badly. Give it some more thought about what you and the others would like to see done in your own club and work from there. Good Luck, jeankay
The easy to state, but hard to implement, answer is - Get yourself and some other like-minded members elected to the board and club offices.
Sadly, short of expelling a member, there's not really anything you can do about egos. But, maybe with the auctions you and a few other members need to sit down one day and devise some rules the auctions need to abide by that don't allow dictators to monopolize the show. Wish I had some better answers, but I can only dream about belonging to a coin club as there aren't any withing a few hours of my home. Best of luck. Guy~
Sounds like more stress then fun. I my self would just stop going. But im a loner and never liked being part of a club.
There are about 350 members.. but I would say, out of them only about 85 of them are active.. There has been some talks about forming a new club.. but the problem is ... it is being headed by one of the trouble makers.. I think the suggestion by Jeankay is worth trying.. There is a by-law and according to it, general election is to be conducted every 3 years. Its now 5 years after the last election.. But, I don't think an election will change everything.. Most certainly, one of the veterans, whose loyalties are divided between those two trouble makers will take charge and nothing will change.. The last meeting was hilarious.. There were scenes of heated arguments (of course not related to coins), questions about honesty, name callings and even pure sledging.. The duration of each meeting is about 3 hours and about 2 hours were spent on this exercise for mouth.. Luckily, there were couple of dealers from outside and could buy some coins..
this whole veteran culture sucks if you guys treated everyone as equals this wouldnt be a problem to begin with crating super members leads to this. any misbehaving member should be banned veteran or not its that simple
