Gold Buffalo

Looks like a Fly By Night Mint sales production. Johnson isn't complaining since he died 5 years ago.

For the record, he was (for a couple of years) "Chief Numismatist" for the Franklin Mint, after he served as the Director of the US Mint in 2000-2001. I'm guessing it was during his tenure at Franklin Mint when these atrocities first appeared.

That is The Morgan Mint. They are a company that operates on the same business model as the Danbury Mint, the Washington Mint, or several other private mints.

They first started putting coins in slabs back in 2003. Their first coins were 2003 ASE's.....in counterfeit ICG shells. When they first appeared I was surprised and wondered why ICG would have licensed their distinctive slab shell to such a company. So Cameron Kiefer and I asked them. They said "What are you talking about? Can you show us these slabs?" We showed them the sales images and sent them an example. Before the week was out they served the Morgan Mint with a Cease and Desist order (Only about 50 to 100 MM "ICG" slabbed ASE's were sold before they were stopped). It turned out that MM had liked the distinctive look of the ICG shells so they went to a firm in China and had them make up a bunch of ICG shells for them. About a year or so later MM was back with slabbed coins again. While at first glance these slabs do look like ICG shells they are not. They are a rectangular slab with the ICG SHAPE on them. It is really weird to hold them in your hand because your eyes see the curved shape while your fingers are reporting that the sides are straight. (Note the fake ICG shells were four years before the first fake ANACS slabs appeared in March of 2007.)