I can't even begin to estimate how many phonecards I have in my possession, especially since adding the huge Art Becker (remember his Telephone & Debit Card Journal) collection to those on hand. Neither of us have been actively collecting the cards for quite some time (and if anyone is looking to buy some cards, keep me in mind )

I guess it was about 15 years ago now that things were really hopping with phonecards & I became the Assistant Section Leader of the CompuServe Telecard Section in the Collectibles Forum. In '97, due to the tremendous success of the cards at the time, we split off and formed our own forum, the Telecard Forum, and we dragged the Casino Chips section (kicking and screaming ) over to the new forum with us. We had a very active membership, message boards had constant postings, and we even had weekly live conferences online. Next thing you know, the bottom fell out of the phonecard market, AOL made huge inroads into the CompuServe membership (CompuServe continued with its hourly pricing while AOL introduced flat $19.99 per month pricing around the same time as we started the Telecard Forum), and activity disappeared.

It would be interesting to know what would have happened to phonecards if the values of common cards stayed around a buck or two each, instead of being overvalued almost immediately from the date of issue. Possibly the overproduction, or rather the production solely for collectible purposes, could have been avoided. It was an interesting time.

As far as a phonecard round robin goes, I would only consider starting one if there was some guarantee that it wouldn't return home

Jim (sorry if I got a little carried away with my reply )