Hello.
Let me introduce myself. I am Larry Michelson and I am one of the Managers of Wings Coins, LLC. A Manager of an LLC is like the president of a corporation. I felt it important to try to provide some information about WINGS and to answer some of your comments. First, we truly appreciate the time you took to make comments as well as the comments themselves. Hopefully I can allay some of your concerns and misconceptions. Our goal is to run a first class operation highlighted by our knowledge, experience, honesty, integrity and competency. We highly value our customers and our customer service.
I will begin initially with a little background and about the principals. Wings started 4 years ago. The technical side of Wings will be headed by Lance Tchor. He will be based in Tampa because that is where he lives. He has been a full time rare coin dealer and a world coin expert since 1977. Lance has personally built many number one world coin registry sets, and presently has four sets rated number one in the NGC Registry. In 2009 NGC saw fit to award him for outstanding achievement with the coveted BEST WORLD SET 2009, a best of the best award. Lance has personally written over 100,000 auction lot descriptions for the world's leading online numismatic auction company and has written numerous articles for several numismatic publications, including the
ANA's, "The Numismatist". He is life member #5190 of the
ANA and belongs to several other numismatic organizations. Lance will be the finalizer. This means that he has final say on whether a coin should be stickered or not. There are several qualified graders who have been retained.
The administrative end of the business will be managed by me in Miami. This is where I live. By way of background I received my CPA license in 1977 in Florida. I worked full time at a big eight accounting firm- Peat, Marwick, Mitchell. I attended the University of Miami law school at night while continuing my full time day job as a CPA. I graduated from U.M. in 1981. I opted to continue my studies and I received a masters degree in law with a major in taxation. Thus I received an LLM.-Taxation. This was 1982. I next became a board certified tax attorney in Florida. This is only awarded to individuals with a certain amount of work experience and the passing of a strenuous test. I also chair our city's (Pinecrest, FL) oral review board for our police department. No police officer is hired without getting my committee's consent. This is a position that I have held since 1996. In addition to being married to my high school sweetheart for 35 years we have one beautiful daughter who is a junior at Washington University in St. Louis.
To provide a sense of security to customers we are FULLY INSURED! Regarding our gold sticker and security, it took over a year to get finalized. Our stickers are holographic and fraud proof. They are non-transferable. They crumble if there is an attempt to remove them. Moreover, we intend to have on our website the ability to match the coin's serial number with whether or not that coin was stickered by us. Until that time any one can contact us at our toll free number or email and ask us directly if the coin is legitimate or not.
I would next like to address some of the specific comments:
1) For oih82w8: We only verify world coins, not
US coins. CAC only verifies
US coins, not world coins. We only sticker graded coins that have pizzaz and would be considered, "Best in Grade". We feel that our gold stickers will yield similar premiums and increased coin values in the market place as CAC stickers have shown to bring.
As far as not being able to access our website, I am perplexed. No one that I have spoken with has had that problem. Please contact me so that we can find a solution.
2) For Wade: At this time the website is a single informational page which is presently under construction and will be fully operational by January 7, 2013.
3) For epikur: To allay your doubts we are a big operation. We have been 4 years in the making. Further, I can assure you that prices and all other information will be on the final website which is currently under construction. In the meantime please feel free to call me toll free at 855-33WINGS (339-4647) to answer any questions that you may have.
4) For HippieOutcast: The practice of picking a name to match an acronym is quite common in business, military and educational institutions. The name "WINGS" and was picked purposely by our numismatic staff after much thought. WINGS is the acronym for World Identification and Numismatic Grading Service.
5) For basebal21: The shape of our gold sticker is the industry norm and widely accepted. The wings that you may be referring to is our company logo. You may be confusing our sticker with our logo.
6) For Conder101:
If your comment was intended to mean that now you need a red bull, I concur. If your comment was intended to mean "great now I need a Wings sticker" let me share a story. When CAC started they provided free submissions for a short period of time. As we all know they have grown tremendously and produced a much sought after green sticker. Their coins seem to bring a premium over similar non-stickered coins in the market place. For Wings, we also intend to provide 20 free submissions to FUN show attendees (you pay standard shipping, handling and insurance). Based on the interest that I am seeing on this thread I am willing to extend that offer to participants who are in this thread. This offer will last for as long as our free submission program lasts. Please contact us at info@wingscoins.com for more information. So I would suggest to take us up on the offer. Don't make the same mistake and miss this free opportunity.
7) For Windchild: Anyone who submits a US coin to us will have it returned and referred to CAC. We only verify grades on world coins. As stated before, our stickers are non-transferable and crumble at the attempt to remove them.
8) For SsuperDdave: Now I know why you are called "super". You hit the nail on the head.
You may think this post is long and wordy but I felt it very important to address your issues and to let you know a little bit more about WINGS and who we are. I take this business very, very seriously and wouldn't be involved in any business that wasn't totally above board and committed to success.
For your free submissions please see my response to Conder101 above. As always if there are any problems or questions I would invite you to email me at Larry@wingscoins.com or to call me on our toll free line 1-855-33WINGS (339-4647).
Again we thank you for your comments and thoughts.
Thank you very much
Larry Michelson, Manager
Wings Coins, LLC
Posted 12/18/2012 10:11 am
