Him and his sister are both scammers why don't they get jobs instead of ripping people off they have not paid their bills in years there are numerous judgements against them both and several people who have not bothered to spend their hard earned money to sue them because they dont pay anyway they are such loosers. I think they should both be in JAIL for FRAUD

Him and his sister are both frauds the make a living scamming instead of working and never pay their bills public records will show the numerouse judgements agains them

I think they should both be locked up. Their only mission is to take money from others.

Scott Shields is the biggest fraud going, I would rather buy one of these coins than Give a dollar to Bear Search and Rescue.

He's not even a Captain, we checked.

What else has he lied about?

This is an old blog. the Capt scott shields lies about his hurricane katrina duty and who know what more with the "bear search and rescue foundation"

We are still waiting for a single one of you to step up to the plate that you are condeming NCM for........what have you done to keep your fellow Americans alive?

Your indignation is trivial as we are sending our sons and daughters off to fight this bad war...........we will do our duty and die for your sins........but please, you do not know the guilt or innocense of NCM.....and you have done nothing to keep anyone alive....NCM donated over a million and a half dollars to WTC related charties. The court will decide if this was a scam or not (my guess from reading the actual copy is it was legal).

Elliot Spiztzer has been a great attorney general, but he should be sueing the EPA whose own inspector General released a report that the EPA liedabout the air quality in NY from the WTC and that they lied on purpose (this is where you should direct your venom) to keep insurance and real-estate interests healthy (not the citizens of New York). This is the crime the AG's office should be looking into for this is a betrayal of the American people on a scale that is unprecented.

Bearsdad

I can see were the NCM could be seen as a good Samaritan by their donation however how did they get the money? They got it by fraudulent and disrespectful means. They not only disrespected their name but also the people who died in that tragedy & above all the people who sacrificed themselves to save someone else. Throwing money around is easy when you have it not to mention they made much more then 35k on those coins so they not only “look like a good Samaritan” but they also made a profit from this terrible event in our history how can this travesty go unchallenged. I got this coin since I had a shower curtain with the original New York Sky line on it before all this happened and I wanted this coin to be part of a collection which I would pass onto my children as a piece of history made into something tangible. I also originally grew up on Long Island so this further fueled my desire to get something like this thinking it would be a nice way to remember what was lost and as a symbol of our sheer determination not to be beaten so easily, that they will be remembered and we will persevere without fear. I am saddened at how some people see something so tragic and can even think of trying to profit from it... it would have been a totally different story if they advertised the truth instead of trying to trick the public if this coin was truly meant to remember those that we lost they would not have tried to deceive the public from the start obviously if deception had to be used the only thing they ended up accomplishing is to disgrace those lost and further the decay of the moral fiber of this once great nation.

they are making this to advance the freedom tower design

Notice that the ad says "100 mil", ".999 silver". Sounds impressive, doesn't it? The .999 does mean that the silver is pure, but "100 mil" means that it is only 100 thousandths or 1/100th of an inch thick. I agree with all of you who are disgusted with people like this.

I was shocked and outraged to see this commercial for ground zero coins...What comes next,,,,jewelery from bone fragments.. My heart aches to think of the people who have suffered and lost loved ones, in this terrible tragedy,, To end up watching some marketing stragedy that profits on the losses of lives .Candace Pahlas

Its more like grave robbing in my eyes. Anyone that could make a profit off of this makes me sick.

What about every single other product that uses charity to make profits, cereal tops, yogurt tops, fast food places. Is that all farce as well. I'm not saying this is necessarily a good thing. I mean, it's better than selling Lance Armstrong bands on e-bay for a hundred bucks, because that's just complete greed.

What about every single other product that uses charity to make profits, cereal tops, yogurt tops, fast food places. Is that all farce as well. I'm not saying this is necessarily a good thing. I mean, it's better than selling Lance Armstrong bands on e-bay for a hundred bucks, because that's just complete greed.

So by donating money they absolve themselves of their crappy marketing techniques? No. This "coin" is being misrepresented to consumers as being legal tender. It is not. The "Commonwealth of Northern Marianas" has no authority to issue coinage.

The company rips off consumers with tacky and misleading marketing, makes huge profits, donates some portion of that profit and therefore is good?

No. Your logic is flawed. The end does not justify the means.

Guys,

The only thing I know is that this company has donated over $35,000 in cash and about a $100,000 in Merchandise to Search and Rescue teams in the United States. I can say that because I am the one that led the first teams at the WTC and run the foundation that got the money.

How much have you donated? Most search & rescue teams in the United States are self funded, even the FEMA teams pay for most of their own training and equipment (that is the real shame here) the average K-9 SAR person will spend (out of their own pocket $5000 to $8000 dollars a year so he may "volunteer" to rescue you, most people do not know or appreciate that fact. Even if they belong to Fire, Police or EMS this type of rescue is self funded. Most responces are to missing alzseimers patients, lost children etc, and then when the world falls down they are there to assist and occasionally give their life, so that others may live.

Please, it is nice to be outraged, but how deep have you gone into your own pockets to help these people who would sacrifice everthing for a stanger. Your doctor will save your life, these people will give theirs to save yours.

This week the Bear Search & Rescue Foundation (www.bearsearchandrescue.org will cut a check to the Fayetteville, North Carolina Police Dept so that they may have a dive rescue team, that money will have come from the National Collectors mint sale of WTC coins (should the silver have sat in a vault doing nothing? It is not the Silver that is prescious, it is human life).

It is not nice to be outraged at the good guys, save it for your Congress that just reauthorized giving wyoming $11 dollars per person in homeland security grants and 11 cents per person to the # 1 target New York. we all know who the target is, that is pork barrelling. There is something wrong in our system but it is not with companies like National Collector Mint that has a history of sharing their profit, they are an example of what business should be.

I hope your days behave for you,

Capt Scott Shields

Bearsdad

PS: web master could you please resed me these words as I think my utter consternation to the comments posted might be of some furthr use if we may reprint them. thanks in advance to any who might cut and paste them back to me (my computer skills have not arrived ther yet) please send to sshields@marinesafetyservice.com .

God, that bit about the tea service was morbid. Sorry about that. It's just upsetting to think about the people and artifacts that went down into that hole. Best not to think about it.

I'm sure there's a silver plating on the coins - it would be too obvious if it was something else. There are various ways to put a silver coat on a coin - I don't know anything about that, I was just trying to do the math to figure costs and give people some idea of how much silver would be involved. In all likelihood I overestimated the silver content by quite a bit - it's probably much less than 1/10th of an ounce in each coin. But even if it was 1/10th of an ounce, to make 10,000 of the coins would require a volume of silver bars that might fit in a milk crate.

Smith Barney probably had that much silver in their executive dining room tea service.

Sterling, just glad you can give us info on silver plating. I, for one, wonder if the "silver" is just any shiny metal recycled from the site - Hugo Neu, the company that the city just made the big recycling deal with, was the largest recycler of metals from Ground Zero.

Has no one noticed the typo on the front of the coin? It says "FREEDON TOWER" with an *N*. I'm not sure what this indicates... hastiness or hoax? Thoughts?

And I don't want to hear any "sterling silver" jokes.