Rebuttal to PNG Survey - How interesting!

Rebuttal to PNG Grading Services Survey - How interesting!

Where was I while all this was going on?
That survey did seem a little holier than thou to me however with only 140 or so respondents.
http://www.swcgs.com/ASA_v_ANA.html
I think this thing just got to trial this month!

By the principal of ACG Grading Company

After reviewing the PNG-ITCA Survey in Coin World so many questions come to mind.
I wonder how many of your readers know the FACTS about some of the leading members of this Industry? Let’s just start with those that are PNG/ITCA/PCGS members and or owners. On July 20,1989 in an FTC Press Release “FTC FILES CHARGES AGAINST COIN CERTIFICATION CO. AND COIN WHOLESALER; COMPANIES TO PAY CONSUMER REDRESS”. The coin certification company that they are referring to is NCI, Numismatic Certification Institute, owned by Steve Ivy and James Halperin. NCI’s affiliate, Heritage Capital Corporation, was also charged. “Under the settlement, the companies and two individuals agreed to a permanent injunction, and Heritage and NCI agreed to contribute $1.2 million into a consumer redress plan...” FTC File No. 882-3208, Civil Action No. 89-1383 CIV-NESBITT), www.ftc.gov, Barron’s, 6/19/89, pp.16-32. NCI is still listed on the CDN price sheet.
On February 9,1990 the FTC issued the following Press Release, ”SPECIAL COUNSEL APPOINTED AT REQUEST OF FTC RECOVERS ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR CONSUMERS IN RARE COIN COMPANY BANKRUPTCY.”.The release states, ”Today’s additional settlements bring total recovery in excess of $4 million.” “In February 1987, the FTC brought suit against Standard Financial Management Corp., charging, among other things, that the company falsely represented that its coins were of a specific grade, when in many cases the coins were of a significantly inferior grade...
Shortly after the FTC suit, the Special Counsel initiated bankruptcy proceedings brought various actions against several principals and suppliers of Standard Financial Management Corp. He has succeeded in obtaining settlements from supplier Kevin Lipton and former Standard Financial owner James Halperin for $1.4 million and $1.3 million, respectively.” FTC File No. X870002, www.ftc.gov.

On August 17,1990 the FTC issued a press release regarding PCGS. “FTC CHARGES COIN CERTIFICATION CO. MISREPRESENTS OBJECTIVITY OF ITS COIN GRADING SERVICES; COMPANY AGREES TO SETTLEMENT” The FTC charged that “PCGS misled consumers by falsely claiming that it provides consistent, objective grading of coins and that investment in PCGS-certified rare coins eliminates all the risk associated with the grading of coins.” PCGS/David Hall was charged and placed on probation for 2 years. Civil Action No. 90-1982, www.ftc.gov, New York Times, 8/17/90 p.D2, The Wall Street Journal, 8/17/90, pp.C1,C12.
These are the people who are behind this Survey. They are all PNG,ITCA and PCGS members today. Together they were “fined in excess of $4 million.” They will tell us that they disqualified themselves due to ownership and/or partial ownership. Of the estimated 221 PNG members, only four have dealt with Accugrade in the past two years. In February 2001 PNG sent a letter to members who were dealing in ACG coins threatening expulsion. Of the estimated 430 survey forms mailed, 141 were reported filled out and returned, @32 percent. Virtually 68 percent refused to be party to this sham survey.
The number of PNG and ITCA members who did not participate speaks louder than the 141 who did. 141 monopolist PNG-ITCA members, who are predominantly PCGS dealers, responded out of an estimated 5,000 dealers nationwide (as listed in CDN ‘02 Dealer Directory) to presumably speak for “The Coin Industry.” These 141 find ACG “unacceptable”...this represents @2.8 percent of the Coin Industry. 98 percent of PNG members have never used or dealt in ACG. This survey shows how out of touch PNG-ITCA is with the Coin Industry.
The fact that PNG has pressured their dealers into NOT dealing in ACG coins, as evidenced in a letter dated 2/28/01 sent out by Robert Bruggerman, Executive Director, then surveys them in regards to USING ASA Accugrade... mystifies me!
They find ACG to be “unacceptable” in almost all of their “categories”:
Detecting counterfeits—we have graded four counterfeits out of 300,000 coins in the last three years. I believe that gives Accugrade a 99.9999 percent accuracy rate, we have resolved three and one is pending, how is this unacceptable?
Customer service, cost, turnaround time, quality of holder—We take great exception to being found generally “unacceptable” in these areas, this furthers my position that these dealers have never even used our service...in 18 years of business we have never had a major complaint, lawsuit, or Government charge. We pride ourselves in out Customer Service Dept., our cost is one of the lowest in the industry. We have never missed a designated turnaround time and the quality of our Holders surpasses all the other services and I challenge them on this matter. Our holders are American-made by a New England craftsman of the highest quality Dupont acrylic and are the safest on the market, no PVC inserts!
As to Grading guarantees, General marketability and Availability of pricing information—We know these are our weak areas and that is for the following reasons...we are a small company who has been set upon by a Big Corporation and counterfeits have been submitted to our service, in the past, knowingly in the hopes to discredit us. We stand behind the authenticity and the consistency of our grading. Regarding marketability, ACG coins have done very well on e-Bay but CDN still refuses to list them even though CDN lists NCI which is out of business and was sited by the FTC. We were led to believe that when ACG coins reached 80,000 units CDN would list ACG, today we are at 300,000 units, when asked again recently by a California PCGS dealer when ACG will be listed, Sean Downings replied “we’re waiting for them to go away.” When a California entrepreneur/collector came up with a pricing Web site and publication listing ACG prices along with other certified coins, his Web site somehow crashed and he was soon out of business.
PCGS can’t allow pricing information for any of the small grading services because that would destroy their Franchise. In a free-market system competition should be encouraged and choices allowed to the public. We are not afforded this in the Coin Industry, which certainly raises issues of ANTITRUST and RACKETEERING!
I will leave you with this thought...The S.S. Central America...coins sold exclusively by Heritage, David Hall, Bowers and Merena and others, mostly PNG members/PCGS dealers. Over 5,000 coins that had been buried at sea for over 120 years encrusted with coral were treated with all kinds of chemicals to remove the encrustations, were miraculously restored to PCGS MS-65 at $15,000.00 a coin. The PCGS holders do not say SEA SALVAGED nor SALT WATER nor CORAL ENCRUSTED, no they have been graded by PCGS as MINT STATE. Have these people changed from 1989, you decide for yourself at www.ftc.gov.



ASA Accugrade, Inc.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Barry Stuppler ANA governor PNG Survey $4 million in FTC fines
David Hall Coins
DHRC Coins
Kevin Lipton Coins
Robert Bruggerman PNG President
Collector's Universe
Positive Protection PNG President
PCGS
Coin price guide
PNG
The industry ICTA Industry Council for Tangible Assets Survey
Heritage Rare Coins
Jim Halperin Coins
Steve Ivy Coins


WOW! WOW! WOW!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Buy the coin not the holder, I've seen garbage in the holders of most of the grading services that I wouldn't buy and I've seen beautiful works of art in those same holders. If I don't like the company I can simply crack out the coin.

 

I do it all the time :thumb:

Bone

 

WHO are these guys?! They actually have a page on the website where they are knowingly selling counterfeits in violation of the Hobby Protection Act! That just doesn't seem real bright to me.

 

In my opinion just someone who took the time to post the legal action.

 

It was new to me. What was the outcome?

 

So far all but about four of the defendants have managed to get themselves dismissed from the case. The last ones will probably succeed in getting the suit dropped before too much longer. The suit was filed in both FL state court and in the Federal court. The Federal court tossed it out because ACG didn't have any valid grounds on which to file the suit.

 

This is the stuff I find interesting. You could be totally right about the Federal Court " tossing it out " and of course I will stand corrected. I am only 6 months into my 3 year study of grading services but something smells bad or this ACG guy is the Prince Of Darkness.

"On August 17,1990 the FTC issued a press release regarding PCGS. “FTC CHARGES COIN CERTIFICATION CO. MISREPRESENTS OBJECTIVITY OF ITS COIN GRADING SERVICES; COMPANY AGREES TO SETTLEMENT” The FTC charged that “PCGS misled consumers by falsely claiming that it provides consistent, objective grading of coins and that investment in PCGS-certified rare coins eliminates all the risk associated with the grading of coins.” PCGS/David Hall was charged and placed on probation for 2 years. Civil Action No. 90-1982, www.ftc.gov, New York Times, 8/17/90 p.D2, The Wall Street Journal, 8/17/90, pp.C1,C12.
These are the people who are behind this Survey. They are all PNG,ITCA and PCGS members today. Together they were “fined in excess of $4 million.” They will tell us that they disqualified themselves due to ownership and/or partial ownership. Of the estimated 221 PNG members, only four have dealt with Accugrade in the past two years. In February 2001 PNG sent a letter to members who were dealing in ACG coins threatening expulsion. Of the estimated 430 survey forms mailed, 141 were reported filled out and returned, @32 percent. Virtually 68 percent refused to be party to this sham survey.
The number of PNG and ITCA members who did not participate speaks louder than the 141 who did. 141 monopolist PNG-ITCA members, who are predominantly PCGS dealers, responded out of an estimated 5,000 dealers nationwide (as listed in CDN ‘02 Dealer Directory) to presumably speak for “The Coin Industry.” These 141 find ACG “unacceptable”...this represents @2.8 percent of the Coin Industry. 98 percent of PNG members have never used or dealt in ACG. This survey shows how out of touch PNG-ITCA is with the Coin Industry. The fact that PNG has pressured their dealers into NOT dealing in ACG coins, as evidenced in a letter dated 2/28/01 sent out by Robert Bruggerman, Executive Director, then surveys them in regards to USING ASA Accugrade... mystifies me!
They find ACG to be “unacceptable” in almost all of their “categories”:
Detecting counterfeits—we have graded four counterfeits out of 300,000 coins in the last three years. I believe that gives Accugrade a 99.9999 percent accuracy rate, we have resolved three and one is pending, how is this unacceptable?
Customer service, cost, turnaround time, quality of holder—We take great exception to being found generally “unacceptable” in these areas, this furthers my position that these dealers have never even used our service...in 18 years of business we have never had a major complaint, lawsuit, or Government charge. We pride ourselves in out Customer Service Dept., our cost is one of the lowest in the industry. We have never missed a designated turnaround time and the quality of our Holders surpasses all the other services and I challenge them on this matter. Our holders are American-made by a New England craftsman of the highest quality Dupont acrylic and are the safest on the market, no PVC inserts!"

Of course if the most expensive coin I owned was graded by PCGS or NGC, or if I were a registry member of those services, I would look at this too as BS

 

Come on Girls! Judges and moderators, all comments are accepted.

 

You won't get too many people to come out and openly criticize ACG because in the past Hagar and ACG has been very quick to threaten people with lawsuits and of course there is the lawsuit mentioned in that original link. The complaint shown in that link is the ammended complaint from after many of the defendants had been dismissed from the case. Many of the people listed in the original complaint were members of several of the coin forums here on the internet and they were drug into the suit because of published comments they had made on the REC.Coins newsgroup or on some of the forums. I don't know if any of them are members here but I know several were/are members of the PCGS forum.

Many people will say that all you need is to have the truth on your side and it will justify you in the end and you will win your case. But the people who have gotten dropped from the case still ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills defending themselves before they got dropped.

But Hagar is right about one thing, the PNG survey was a complete sham.

 

I can tell you this "A couple of individuals are LAYING PRETTY LOW right now..."

Bone

 

look at the date there too Airedale. 1990 was one of the low points for collectors because in the late 80's a number of Wall Street firms had formed coin investment "stocks" and a lot of money entered the hobby (especially for high end stuff) and the prices rose to astronimical highs, then in 1989 something happened and the value of those cons soffened and the investors left, many of them losing huge sums of money. The coin market collapsed and the FTC stepped in to try to figure out what went wrong. the fact that mr Hall was in trouble is being used as a ploy by the Hagers to direct attention away from themselves, but the bottom line remains that ACG and the Hagers are what they are and the PNG actions were justified. PNG is a very well respected group of dealers and they hold their membership to a very high standard. If they had failed to act then membership in PNG would have become meaningless. I appreciate their actions.

Conder-Peter Davis (our forum Administrator was named in the original filing and in the one listed in the OP of this thread, so i'd say some of them (those mentioned in the lawsuit) are still around.

Airedale-You have said that you are on a mission to distinguish the different grading services, could you please tell us what you are doing to meet your goal in 3 years? thanks!

 

I didn't say they weren't, it was just that I don't emember all of the names from the original complaint and I tend to know people on the various forums by their handles and not their real names. So I didn't know if any were on here or not. Considering they people attacked tend to be ACTIVELY involved, I'm not surprised to find that there are some here.

 

Thank you for the history lesson, this sheds some light on this.

It is not going to take 3 years. After buying 200 or so " Slabbed " coins in the last 6 months the fraud is becoming transparent. My stomach really churned paying those PCGS and to the same extent NGC prices to obtain coins comparable to the " 2nd Tier " and guess what. In six months or less I will be able to give a full report. Certainty none of the 5,828 members of this forum could be responsible for bashing the " 2nd Tier " grading companies but someone has driven their prices down dramatically. This makes them a really good buy on the Internet. Maybe those Bashers are buying them, " cracking them out " and sending them to their " favorite service " for a profit. Time will tell. Funny but the PNG Survey got me interested in all of this! I have been a business man all of my adult life as my parents and theirs before them were 103 years in the same market place, and of course the we think we are the best in the field, but I could not rate any competitors POOR. The market would have taken care of them and they would be OUT. I think some grading services just have better PR than others. Again, time will tell. I will publish my report in the thread Distinguishing Grading Services.

 

Just out of curiosity which of these were dismissed?

IRA STEIN’S statement that ACG “knowingly grades ‘counterfeit’ coins, and ‘fakes’”;
MARK GREENE’S statement that ALAN HAGER is a “blatant crook”;
BYRON L. REED’S statement that DIANE HAGER is a “***** and those who deal with ACG are her “johns”;
IRA STEIN’S statement that ACG was sued for committing “fraud” against an elderly 80+ year old woman by selling her over-graded coins;
BRUCE HICKMOTT’S and FRED MURPHY’S statement that DIANE HAGER is a “screaming fishwife”;
BYRON L. REED’S statement that ALAN HAGER has been “found liable for misrepresenting coins”;
ERIC TILLERY’S statement that ALAN HAGER was “proven to be a fraud -- once a fraud, always a fraud”;
REID GOLDSBOROGH’S statement that “many people get cheated by ACG every day”;
REID GOLDSBOROGH’S statement that there is a “huge repository of evidence…that [ACG’S] very business model is based on deception and cheating”;
BRUCE HICKMOTT’S statement that “ACG is knowingly providing a tool that others are using with intent to defraud”;
GREGORY ROHAN’S statement that ACG is “basically a fraud;”
GREGORY ROHAN’S statement that “ I have lost track of the number of counterfeit coins I have seen in ACG holders”;
BARRY STUPPLER’S statement that “ coins in ACG holders can be 2 to 6 grades lower” and “have no liquidity”;
JOHN a/k/a dog_xx, Dog97, Dog (ME)’s statement that ACG’s President was arrested in Longwood, Florida for same-sex prostitution; and
BARRY STUPPLER and MICHAEL S. FEY’S statement that ACG’s head grader is a convicted felon and has spent time in jail
Remember the free press before you delete this!

 

?????

 

Thank You for the update.