Contursi returns inserts, donates reward to ANA

Coin World
Monday March 14, 2005

A California coin dealer took advantage of a monetary reward to return 13,535 Professional Coin Grading Service certification inserts to PCGS, and donated the bounty to the American Numismatic Association.

The money raised will help launch a new educational program. 

Steven L. Contursi, president of Rare Coin Wholesalers of Dana Point, on Feb. 1 returned the inserts he accumulated since the company was founded 19 years ago.

The inserts record the condition or grade of numerous coins that have since been broken out of their encapsulated holders, or slabs, and resubmitted for grading.  PCGS pays collectors, dealers and anyone else who wants to cash in a 50-cent bounty per insert. 

"The inserts were kind of like my children," Contursi said, in a press release.  "I didn’t want to let go of them all these years, and even had them cataloged like a library because they were souvenirs of the thousands of classic, high-quality rare coins I’d purchased and sold.  However, I realized the importance of correcting misleading information in the Population Reports.  It was the right thing to do." 

The inserts are literally worth more than the paper they’re printed on, according to the grading service, because PCGS can update its Population Report, offering collectors a more accurate picture of the actual number of coins in a given grade.

"It’s in the best interests of the coin market to have the population reports as accurate as possible," PCGS founder and president David Hall said in an interview.  "That’s why we pay a bounty for the inserts, for whatever reason they were taken out." 

Represented among the returned inserts were 42 certified 1879 and 1880 gold $4 Stella pattern pieces with a combined estimated value of more than $5 million, and 130 round and octagonal 1915-S Panama-Pacific International Exposition gold $50 commemorative coins valued at more than $5 million, according to Contursi.  Also included were inserts for 168 1907 Saint-Gaudens, High Relief gold $20 double eagles valued at more than $3 million. 

Contursi donated to the ANA the 50-cents per-insert "bounty" offered by PCGS for the return of the inserts, and Hall matched his donation. 

ANA Executive Director Christopher Cipoletti said the $13,535 combined donation is going to be used as seed money to create lectures involving exhibits in the ANA Money Museum and educational programs for traveling museum displays across the country.

Hall said annually about 50,000 inserts are returned, representing 2.5 to 3.3 percent of the 1.5 million to 2 million coins PCGS grades each year.  All people have to do is mail their inserts to PCGS at P.O. Box 9458, Newport Beach, CA 92658.  Once monthly, the inserts are tabulated and senders reimbursed.

Contursi encourages other dealers to turn in their old encapsulation inserts, and said he plans to make arrangements with Numismatic Guaranty Corporation to return thousands of their old inserts he has accumulated since 1987 when NGC was founded.
 
PCGS PRESIDENT David Hall, far left, and dealer Steven L. Contursi sift through more than 13,000 grading slab inserts turned in by Contursi.