I don't know the membership numbers for the current version of the KC club.
I forgot to mention before that back in the day, the club's downloadable bi-monthly PDF newsletter was 30-40 pages long, included lots of color photos, professionally written stories, etc. It was easily a match for the best hardcopy pipe magazines of the pre-internet era. Who put it together? Singlehandedly? For zero compensation (except satisfaction)? This board's
kcghost.
As for resurrecting the carving contest, good luck.
It required 40-60 hours of labor to make happen: Receiving 50+ physical packages, opening, cataloging, etc. all of them; then having a large enough room with enough table space to show them all side-by-side simultaneously for in-hand examination, then the actual judging, followed by photographing
all of them (the winners from all angles). Then afterward, re-boxing and and shipping all non-winners back to their owners (some in foreign countries), in addition to packaging and shipping the winning 7-day set and its custom stand to the winning lottery ticket holder. (Keeping track of which was another non-trivial affair)
I've heard that both Brian and Dave are always looking for ways to add to their workload, though.