Benchmark = Island Rarities??

roadrunner

Just noticed a curious Coin World ad with high powered coins from a company in Boca Raton, FL called Island Rarities. Most everything was listed as "make offer." Some of these coins like the 1854-0 half in MS68 seem awful familiar to what BV was offering recently. Seem unusual to have Millions of dollars in an ad with nothing but an Email address and being an ANA life member. But to each his own. I certainly wouldn't respond to such a vague ad? Is this firm an alias for BV? The inventories are somewhat similar but it could be that IR purchased a large grouping of BV's coins.

roadrunner

ldhair

I'm thinking these folks slab their own coins. NTC?

Russ

Island Rarities is owned by Kevin McNerney, the founder of NTC. Has done business on eBay under a variety of aliases, including Titanproducts. Don't know what he's going by these days.

Russ, NCNE

RegistryCoin

666

roadrunner

Thanks for the info. Someone would have to be crazy to respond to an ad like this one. But it must work or IR wouldn't be doing it!

666.....I like that. MS 66.6

roadrunner

Russ

<< <i>666 >>



Now that I think about it, one of his eBay aliases did have the number 6, or perhaps multiple 6's in it. Can't remember exactly what it was, though. I'll dig around and see if I still have the additional info.

Russ, NCNE

Russ

It was coinguy66 before it was Titanproducts.

Here's an interesting thread about a bait and switch they tried to pull on me.

Russ, NCNE

ealandg

Wow, Russ. I'm impressed with your tenacity. What was the story with the person who was obviously somehow associated with this company? Did they ultimately end up being an employee or something?

Rampage

Here is the eBay user ID history for the subject person. This is just copied and pasted from the eBay page.


User ID History for equityforsale
User ID History Effective Date End Date
killnhunt Friday, Nov 20, 1998 Tuesday, Mar 09, 1999
coinguy66 Tuesday, Mar 09, 1999 Friday, Jul 05, 2002
titanproducts Friday, Jul 05, 2002 Sunday, Nov 23, 2003
coinguy66 Sunday, Nov 23, 2003 Monday, Mar 01, 2004
equityforsale Monday, Mar 01, 2004 Present

Rampage

Note that the seller used coinguy66 two times over the years.

Rampage

I was looking at a couple of previous auctions where the seller states that he only sells PCGS and NGC graded coins. The auctions I looked at were PCGS and NGC coins.

roadrunner

It just seemed strange to me that the Knoxville 1854-0 half in NGC MS68 (value around $70-100K) shows up in this ad. This was a former BV coin and not one you would think would end up like this.
Coins like this usually tend to stick with high powered dealers with heavy advertising budgets and lots of name recognition. That's why I wondered if IR might just be stumping some coins for BV. There are over a dozen complete early proof sets offered too. Big time stuff.

For what it's worth most of the coins in this ad are certified by NGC or PCGS. Only a few raw coins and no NTC stuff.

roadrunner

Zerbe

AHHHHHH, my favorite coin company, BENCHMARK VENTURES.

They are one of three reasons that I do not put together any more PCGS Registry Sets.

The full page ads run by Benchmark have seemingly been replaced by full page ads for Rare Coin Wholesalers: essentially the same company, owned primarily by, S. L. Contursi.

My observation is that Benchmark, for unexplicable reasons, , is fading out of the picture and being replaced with the new name of, Rare Coin Wholesalers, but with the same cast of characters running it.

I could be wrong, and it is just an observation and educated guess
on my part.

Paul Taylor

roadrunner

I spent some time talking with a BV rep at the ANA and stupidly gave them my name, address and email. I got a fairly interesting first call a month or so later basically saying all the great things they could do for me. I gave them all the details from me end and my philosophy on buying, etc. I wasted an hour or so with this call. They let me know that one of their principals (Clifford?) would later contact me with details and that they could help with my goals. Well that never happened. A few months would go buy and then I'd get another cold call from another salesman and I'd just ignore them. But I keep getting these calls at work and it's a pain in the butt now.

roadrunner