Your commemorative coin surcharges at work ... NOT!!!!
BillJones
Posts: 34,796 ✭✭✭✭✭
A few days ago one of members ATS posted a question about the surcharges that are added to the cost of modern commemorative coins that are sold by the mint to collectors. I stated that sometimes the money did not go where it was intended. Now on the front page of the February 28 edition of Coin World we have another example.
Something called the Black Patriots Memorial Fund got $902,758 from the surcharges that were collected from the 1998 Black Revolutionary Patriots commemorative silver dollar. Now we learn that the group disbanded in 2003 without building the memorial that was supposed to be constructed from the funds. Then another group the National Mall Liberty Fund was formed to build the monument in 2005. They didn’t build anything either. We have learned this though a Freedom of Information Act request that Coin World initiated.
So what happened to the $902,758 dollars that collectors paid to the mint in surcharges? No one seems to know. That is a claim that there was a “sizeable cache of gold coins stored in an unknown vault.” No one seems to know when these coins are or were stored, how many there were or what they are. There were reports that some of the coins were found to be missing when an inventory was taken of them.
Of course the FBI has found that there is no evidence of wrong doing ….
Yea right, the money just evaporated or perhaps the Easter bunny took it and gave it to Santa Claus.
It’s bad enough that collectors get hosed every time we buy these coins with surcharges. It’s worse when the funds paid don’t end up going anywhere, except “up in smoke.”
Something called the Black Patriots Memorial Fund got $902,758 from the surcharges that were collected from the 1998 Black Revolutionary Patriots commemorative silver dollar. Now we learn that the group disbanded in 2003 without building the memorial that was supposed to be constructed from the funds. Then another group the National Mall Liberty Fund was formed to build the monument in 2005. They didn’t build anything either. We have learned this though a Freedom of Information Act request that Coin World initiated.
So what happened to the $902,758 dollars that collectors paid to the mint in surcharges? No one seems to know. That is a claim that there was a “sizeable cache of gold coins stored in an unknown vault.” No one seems to know when these coins are or were stored, how many there were or what they are. There were reports that some of the coins were found to be missing when an inventory was taken of them.
Of course the FBI has found that there is no evidence of wrong doing ….
Yea right, the money just evaporated or perhaps the Easter bunny took it and gave it to Santa Claus.
It’s bad enough that collectors get hosed every time we buy these coins with surcharges. It’s worse when the funds paid don’t end up going anywhere, except “up in smoke.”
Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
0
Comments
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
<< <i>I'm shocked... SHOCKED! >>
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC
2002 IRS Form 990
2003 IRS Form 990
Those are the only two forms that I could find online. At the end of 2001 and 2003 they had invested over $804,000 in "Memorial Development Costs". Looks like the 2003 form shows the money ($903,306) coming in as a government grant...but no forms have been posted online after that and the organization is no longer listed on the IRS website.
I'm sure the money was well spent.