"Sgs Americas Grading" - Ha!

Dave,

You just hit the nail on the head when you said "Most of these so called "dealers", they have no more the amount of knowledge about coins as the shop at home people..."

From another thread here I found;




and;




Mishap-Coins just about hit the nail on the head with his research. Richard Howard has been in the coin business for quite a while. Many years ago Richard Howard also started handling sports cards and manufactured a line of sports card supplies. Abon Cards & Coins and Ohio Coin Investments were both distributors of Howard's sports card supplies. During this time Richard Howard got involved with the Shop at Home Network and the grading service was created in order to add perceived value to the sports card products being offered on Shop at Home.

A web site was created to give the appearance that the cards that were offered had been graded by a legitimate grading company. These graded cards were also available to Abon Cards & Coins, and to Ohio Coin Investments. As the sports cards reached the end of their run it was decided that Howard's would do the same thing with coins.

If you look at the phone numbers for Advanced Grading Specialists on their web site (now only available via the Internet Archive located at https://www.archive.org ) you will find that they all trace back to Richard Howard in Leipsic, Ohio. For example, the number 419-943-7401 traces back to 119 E. Main Street, Leipsic, Ohio, 45856 (taken from the Ohio Yellow Pages Online), which is one of Richard Howard's business addresses. In addition, the address on the submission for is 141 South Main Street, Bowling Green, OH 43402. Do a quick search for this address and you will find that it is Howard's Rare Coin Gallery.

What you may not notice is that the submission address for Advanced Grading Specialists in Florida, P.O. Box 701943, St. Cloud, FL 34770-1943, is the same as the submission address for National Numismatic Certification, LLC. A quick Whois lookup of nnccoingrading.com reveals that it was registered by Bob Johnson, 5280 Countryside Ct., St. Cloud, FL 34771. So, Advanced Grading Specialists still exists in the form of Bob Johnson and National Numismatic Certification, LLC.

But, what of Larry Bence, Abon, and Star Grading Service? A quick Whois lookup tells us that Star Grading Service is indeed at 38 Church Street, Bellville, Ohio, 44813, and the web site, stargrading.org, was registered by David Sparks. So, who is David Sparks? He is Larry Bence's brother-in-law.