THR & Associates

I don't understand why people ask to have this thread closed especially when the discussion is clearly about the pitfalls of buying and selling gold. There is something to be learned by all. If these two guys want to hold their court here then I say let them. I enjoy reading it. As usual, if it isn't your cup of tea, there are other topics on Cointalk.

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In sympathy to THR & Associates, I can imagine that people can get quite hostile when they are told what they thought they had, isn't what they really have. I'm glad they are here to address the accusations made against them.

 

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I don't know THR from any of the other fly by night gold buyers who have popped up out of nowhere the past few years. But I do know one thing...I've yet to see one of these companies set up a booth at a local or major coin show. This says a LOT. It says they know they aren't being fair with customers and know they cannot compete with legitimate dealers and buyers who have no problem showing the customer what the live spot price is for metals. You never walk into one of these hotel gigs and see a monitor with the London spot scrolling across the screen, because then people would know how bad a deal they're being offered. Until that day comes, I don't think there is anything they can say to justify their claims of being honest and fair.
Guy

 

There is no reason to sell coins to a scrap gold dealer which is probably why you don't see them at coin shows. Gold in the form of coinage is already in the monetary form or it has numismatic value, and usually both. The last thing you would do would be to sell gold coins to a refiner for melting.

 

Thats the last thing you and I would do, but I've seen plenty of other people do just that. And not just bullion gold, but numismatic gold. It's sickening to see someone sell a $20 St Gaudins for $400, knowing they got less than 1/4 the price of just the bullion content, and it happens daily.
Guy

 

I agree.

I bought a jar of wheat cents from an elderly lady. Your "associates" offered her face value for them. Yes, one cent each.

Now, is that by any means fair? No it's not.

You can say your "honest" all you want, but let's take a look at one of your ads.



8 times face for a silver half dollar.

This image was taken July 19th. At the time, silver was $40.00 an ounce.

A half dollar melted for $14.47. Even then, the "dealers" that you speak of, were paying 20 times face, or $10 each.

EVERY Coin dealer in a 50 mile radius was paying 20 times face.

But no, your paying Eight. That speaks loads about your "honesty and integrity"

"Notaliar"? Well you claim to be paying "more than most dealers". However you were paying up to 8 times face for silver half dollars. Since all dealers were paying 20x, that makes YOU a liar, not us.

Up to $6,750 for a Barber half dollar.

Hmm...that seems like a lot, but you forgot the 1904-S Barber half, which retails for $19,000 alone in MS-63.

See, I'm not stupid, and most of us on here are not. I can read your whole outfit like a book.

The fact alone that you operate under a multitude of names is a huge red flag for ANYONE that knows a thing or two about business.

See, you make a name for yourself, and set up at a few places. If the word "Slips" and a few people find out what kind of jip joint you really are, then the reputation for your name starts to stink.

So you make up a new name, and then operate under that, so people don't know about your bad name.

In your defense, you say that the entire misfortune you brought to people by ripping them off is due to "a few of your employees", and acting like this is an isolated incident.

You also back up your claims by pulling the old "this is a free country" argument out of your hat, claiming that restaurants charge $2.25 for a soft drink that costs them 10 cents.

While that may or not be true, your already starting out by placing blame on others, making everyone forget that YOUR in the wrong here.

See, when you point a finger at someone, you have 3 pointing back at you.

Anyone with an IQ over 5 can look at on the internet to see the numerous complaints people have against your business. Your story of a few employees acting like idiots is ridiculous and completely absurd.

You also seem to paint dealers with a wide brush, acting like they all rip people off.

A lot of coin dealers are honest, hard working folks. Heck there are even a few on this forum that have a good name for themselves.

But your company, on the other hand, is a complete and utter scam. You pay little for everything. When a dealer pays 60%, you pay 30%, trying to scrape as much dollar off the customer as you can, making them feel good while you operate behind a shroud of dishonesty.

Then you come onto this forum, backing your company with ridiculous statements that seem to put everyone else but you in the "scammer" bucket.

While we are at it, I would like to direct everyone's attention to this link:
http://crossville-chronicle.com/local/x960646700/Treasure-Hunters-Roadshow-checks-bounce

Seems like the THR was so caught up in ripping people off, they seem to forgot that they ran out of money.

Here is a good read too:
http://register-news.com/local/x912868996/Treasure-Hunters-Roadshow-facing-lawsuit


Let's save the best for last:
http://www.wwaytv3.com/bbb_warns_treasure_hunter_roadshow_could_be_pirates_your_possessions/09/2010

Remember your username is "not a liar".

Well:

The Treasure Hunters Roadshow told us they are accredited with the Better Business Bureau. But BBB Coastal Carolina President and CEO Kathy Graham says they lied.​

"They do have an A- rating. That is correct," Graham said. "However they are not BBB accredited, and by law they are not allowed to use that logo without being accredited."

I found this link too. Besides lying, THR also breaks the law:

http://theexaminer.com/stories/news/transient-gold-buyers-forced-shut-down


"You may be pleased to know that THR is experiencing major turmoil.
It was published last weekend that axgroup of current and former
Employees has filed a class action lawsuit due to THR & Jeff Parson's
Disregard of labor laws. The eBay operation has been shut down. At least three retail
Stores are closing. "

"Many of us employes got hosed when THR decided to screw us all out of Bonuses owed and proper wages."

Looks like THR is on a very slippery slope.


​

 

Detecto. WOW Great job.
In your pic it says they pay "up to 8X face" with an asterisk.
That means that they probably pay less than 8X. What is the disclaimer on that offer?

 

I don't remember exactly.

 

I suppose there are stupid people. However I would say the average person at a coin show knows better than to sell gold coins for junk prices. This is why you don't see cash 4 gold outfits at coin shows and not, as you assert, they are all crooked as a bunch.

 

Good Job, Detecto! I am very impressed! Truly!:thumb:

 

That ad like Detecto's, I saw one in the last few months at work. In a local newspaper, maybe the Detroit Free Press? I'm sure it's long gone. But I remember going point by point with my boss, saying how ridiculous their offers were. It was when silver was higher, 40/oz. or so.
"15 times more than face!" sounds a lot better than "60% of spot price!"

 

40% Kennedys

Thats 8X face on the 40% Kennedys. On the 90% we were going 21X.


Thank you to those of you who posted yesterday in support of simply allowing me to speak my opinion, even if you don't agree with it.

Wheat pennies we pay 2 cents a piece for. I've never paid less, and I'll pay more if its a key date. At 2 cents a piece we get roughly 30 lbs. of pennies per show. I tell people straight up, and count accurately. I personally make no money off of them, so either you take it or you keep 'em. Some people put them into coinstar!

I would certainly hate to see gold coins and others melted down. I'm sure our company does this on occasion, but I believe many of them are auctioned off or traded. 90% 'junk' coins can be traded on the market in $1000 face value bags. Hopefully, many of these places do that. I really don't know what our company does with them, I just buy them.

We are certainly a place you can quick money at a fair price. If someone wants to deal with ebay or craigslist or put an ad in the paper or whatever, they are free to do that. But they come to us because they do not want to deal with the hassle of reselling items. We don't even get full retail when we sell them, because it takes too much time. We sell a service. That service is time. I don't lie to anyone about anything that they have, and what they get is largeley up to them.

 

Good job! You seem to have completely forgot:

1. Your outfit lied to the BBB.
2. One of your operations was shut down by the cops because your were in violation of many laws.
3. You look stuff up on a "database of collectors" but in all honesty, it was ebay, as verified by several of your ex-employees.
4. Your outfit wrote roughly 200 checks that bounced.

. I also have a copy of an
Email, written by Jeff Parsons and sent to his remaining employees, pleading with them to make even LOWER offers to customers, so that the company can refill
Its bank account. No regard for actual value. Just pure
Greed. Payroll checks & checks cut to customers have bounced in the last
Two weeks.

Jeff also had an affair.

Although this is unverified, THR's ebay account...err I mean "group of collectors" was shut down.

They have also been writing bad checks as late as this month.
http://www.havasunews.com/articles/2012/06/06/news/doc4fcee5531b9ee310232099.txt

 

It IS as bad as you think.

First of all, let me offer my apologies to the good people of the Coin Talk community. It does appear as if this thread was hijacked by two "outsiders" - and I am an "outsider," too, so I will try to make my message brief and to the point, so as not to further impose here. The thread seemed to turn into something of an argument between two posters, one of them a current employee of THR, spouting the justification dogma that they are fed on a daily basis, and defending the crooked business practices of his organization. I felt that another perspective, the perspective of a former employee who's seen all the corruption and lies first hand.

I am a former employee. I was not laid off in the recent round of layoffs, I walked out of that job two years ago when it became very evident how Jeff Parsons was going to run his business. I worked at Jeff's HOUSE for 18 months in the early days of "Treasure Hunter's Roadshow." Some of the quotes from other sources on the internet that have been reposted here were written by me. (Most of them, actually.)

I was pretty close to the upper echelons of management of this company, and what eventually became the triumvirate of Jeff Parsons and the DeLong brothers. I had a friend in accounting that passed along some information that I'm certain Mr. Parsons didn't want to become common knowledge among the ranks. In short, I knew a LOT about what was going on in that company.

I'll just say that 99.9% of what you suspect about that company is true, and it's worse than you all ever suspected.

In short: yes, this company breaks the law every day that they have a roadshow running live. Yes, they are aware that they are paying incredibly low prices. Their training manual encourages their buyers to buy as LOW as possible. Ridiculously low. So low that it should be criminal. Recently, when their bank account "mysteriously" emptied overnight and they bounced about 4,000 checks (and not for the first time), Jeff Parsons sent an email to the company encouraging buyers to offer even lower prices than the absolutely unfair prices that they were previously offering, to beef up the "company coffers." They never store their gold for the amount of time required by the local authorities. Gold gets overnighted or picked up ASAP. Their budget is too tight for them to do anything else. They HAVE to get that gold because EVERY WEEK they are on advance. They would spend ALL OF THEIR MONEY - down to the last cent, buying stuff at shows - he was so greedy, he just didn't know when to stop. They would ROUTINELY pay into the 10's of thousands of dollars in NSF fees every month. My personal payroll check bounced on more than one occasion. I was management, so Jeff would cover it with cash. He sold HUGE quantities of silver coinage under the table. Certainly enough to pay his IRS debt 2 or 3 times. They would have the eBay department sell coins that they KNEW were fake - they did not have a lot of quality control when it came to checking for counterfeits. He claimed the million dollar renovations to his home as a "business" expense.

He DELIGHTED in the fact that folks confused his crooked operation with Antiques Roadshow. That is absolutely intentional. They, without any shadow of a doubt, willfully took advantage of people - financially fragile people, elderly people, people desperate to pay their mortgages - people who could least afford to fall victim to his schemes, but who did not know any better. Noble profession, eh? Essentially he buys his employees. He throws enough money at them that they throw their morals and conscience aside and become predators. It reminds me a bit of the Milgram experiment - Parsons gives them permission to rip people off, and all of the dogma to justify it, and pretty soon, the employees become more and more enthusiastic, to the point where they will high five each other after making a particularly "good buy." (i.e. buying a valuable item for a pittance.). Jeff's not a real smart guy, but he's charismatic, and if you're already walking the tightrope of moral turpitude, he knows just what to say to tip you to the dark side.

I could write several more paragraphs about the ways that this company is crooked, but I won't. If you suspect it, it's probably true. I finally got out of there when I found out they weren't paying their withholding taxes as they are supposed to. At current, it appears that they owe the iRS $1.3 million for the last three quarters of 2011. My guess is that payroll taxes were not paid for the first two quarters of 2012, either, thus I suspect his IRS debt is in reality quite a bit higher. When I found out he wasn't paying withholding taxes, I started making an exit plan. That, combined with fielding phone calls from angry eBay customers (because of the fakes he sold) and the phone calls from families whose elderly parents had sold family heirlooms for fractions of pennies on the dollar (items which had been melted long ago, even though they were supposed to be in "storage") just got to be too much. The day I walked away from that operation was one of the best days I can recall. It's a little like being in an unhealthy or abusive relationship - you don't really realize how crazy it had gotten, how bad it had really gotten, until you've been distanced from it for a few weeks. Man, I looked back and could not believe that I was willing to be a part of that organization for as long as I was. It was really, really bad and really, really crooked.

So, again, I apologize for hijacking your thread - but I felt like my perspective might be appreciated, at least by some posters in this thread.

Carry on and happy collecting - I will say that is the one thing that I do give credit to THR for - I went into that job not knowing much about collectible coins at all, but left it with a great education in and a big appreciation for numismatics.

 

Oh, and to clarify a point that was brought up above. YES - THE VAST MAJORITY of their coinage is melted anymore. I was just talking to someone the other day and said that it's so sad how much numismatically significant coinage was probably melted by this outfit.

 

Thank you for your insider's view. It was very interesting and much appreciated.

 

Would you care to share Mr Parson's eBay ID with us?

 

Why does your ad not state 21X for 90% and 8X for 40%? It just lumps all Kennedys at 8X.

 

In my opinion, THR is run by thieves. No amount of spin will ever change my opinion.

 

Of course they are Rick, and I think that's proven by "hasaconscience's" post above. There is no way to spin it any differently.

 

But they'll keep spinning.