Just got this email from ANACS: ANACS has recently been sold by Anderson Press Incorporated to Driving Force, LLC, of Colorado, owned by James Taylor. The purchase was effective December 21, 2007 and the company is being relocated to suburban Denver, Colorado. The office is currently closed for the holidays to allow time for the move. Customers that had submissions at the Austin location please rest assured that they are being handled in the safest and most professional of manners as they are transported by armored service to the new office. Business will resume and submissions will begin to ship out January 2, 2008. If there are any questions please don't hesitate to contact Mr. Taylor at: James.Taylor@ANACS.com The new ANACS office will be located at: 6555 S. Kenton St, Suite 303 Englewood, CO 80112 1-800-888-1861 www.ANACS.com
Anybody know what impact this had on employees? How many of their staff moved to Colorado? And what of their relation to the ANA?
The ANA began ANACS back in the late '70s / early '80s as the American Numismatic Association Certification Service to authenticate coins (i.e., week out counterfeits). It morphed into a grading service and was eventually sold. ANACS no longer has no connection to the ANA.
Copied from the PCGS forum: While many questions on what transpired and what the new, new ANACS intends to do remain, I now provide you with the facts as I know them. I am Mike Ellis, former authenticator, attributor and grader at ANACS. The bulk of my time was spent authenticating, attributing and grading early U. S. type coinage, not modern errors and varieties as many seem to think. I thought I was on vacation. I returned home from visiting my brother for Christmas in the wee morning hours on the 26th. Shortly after waking I received a call from Tim Hargis, former Senior Numismatist and an exceptional numismatist at that. He informed me that many "developments" had taken place at work and it would be best if I came in and was told face-to-face of the changes. I arrived at what used to be ANACS Austin at around 11:30 a.m. As soon as I walked in I knew something was terribly wrong. Everyone was packing, including a crew for hire with a Mayflower truck! Tim Hargis was already gone. Several ex-employees told me what was up and then I got my chance to meet with James Taylor who had been a good friend of mine for years. This is what he told me: "I have formed a new corporation, Driving Force, LLC. I have purchased ANACS and we have to be in a suburb of Denver, ready to do business by January 2nd. ANACS will fall under the umbrella of Driving Force and we will continue to do business as ANACS. (He then told me some of their plans and the direction they were heading but that is inconsequential and you will see much more of those plans come to light in the coming months.) I tried to purchase ICG. The deal fell through. I have left ICG and so have most most of the people at ICG at greatly reduced salaries until we get up and running. When the deal to buy ICG fell through I called Mary Counts to inquire if Anderson Press would be interested in selling ANACS. Mary said that they had not thought about it but would run it by the board. Well, our buy/sell figures were workable and I told my lawyers to get the deal done in four weeks. (This all started in early November.) They told me it could not be done and they were right. It took six weeks. We want you but you have to do what you have to do because until we know if our plans work out we can't hire you." That was that. I can say that I see the new, new ANACS as more closely akin to what ICG was doing than what ANACS has always done. I was very proud of ANACS because I know it was the grading service providing the most unbiased opinions on coins and the experienced graders were true, interested numismatists - pure and simple. Anderson Press issued a press release at about 4:30 on Thursday the 27th stating they had sold 100% of ANACS to James Taylor of Driving Force, LLC as of December 21st. So that's how things went down and where it all stands now. I hope I was able to shed some useful light on the situation. Respectfully submitted, Mike Ellis
It would appear this has greately affected ICG also. Time will tell if Englewood, CO is big enough for two major coin grading services.
Sorry you went through that, Mike. How do they plan to be up and running on January 2nd if they dismissed all their staff ? That's one business day from now.
They'll be up and running because they have the ICG staff to now work at ANACS. I suspect that ICG will be moving to Florida or Texas.
How is that not fraud? Someone sends a coin to ANACS based on their faith in those graders and that companies history. If it is graded by a different set of graders than you contracted with, that amounts to fraud. Ruben
It's not fraud Ruben. That's like saying you go to a particular pharmacy because someone you know works there - but if somebody else fills your prescription it's fraud. Graders change jobs all the time. And usually unless you hear it through the grapevine you don't even know it.
That does not constitute fraud. Ditto for when you go to see a Broadway show and the big star doesn't perform that day/night. There is no contract or agreement that any particular grader will assessing your coins.
It's not fraud. The vast majority of submitters don't know who the graders are; even if they did, they don't know who's going to grade any given coin. If they DID know those things, now THAT sounds more fradulent to me. Nepotism / favoritism, anyone ?
While it may not be legally fraud, I agree that it is somewhat deceptive unless they change the slab design so that collectors will know which grading standard was used. The top tier TPGs seem to be down from four to two, with one of them slipping.
