Silver Mined from Ground Zero?

I saw the actual DR spot over the weekend. I was so aghast I came very close to logging on and sending a nasty email, but thought the better of it, as I'm sure their customer service is outsourced.

Perhaps a snail mail response is in order.

National Collector's Mint, Inc.
8 Slater Street
Port Chester, NY 10573

My letter is already in the mail...

I was SO SICK when I saw that

My complaint letter is in the mail too. I wonder if Eliot Spitzer would like to investigate the claim that these coins are "made from silver recovered from Ground Zero." Sounds like bullshit and consumer fraud to me!

i bet the owner of the vault agreed to this. not that it makes this any les disgusting.

sam -- that's assuming their claim that it came from Ground Zero is actually true. And I don't think these guys even have anything to do with the U.S. Treasury Dept., which also puts this into question about it's legitimacy.

What about Guiliani? He has made millions off of 9/11. He was an inspiration right after 9/11, but since then, he is just mining 9/11 for every bit of gain and profit possible.

I think there were two gold vaults under the WTC, both of which were recovered - I don't remember anything about silver but it wouldn't take much silver to plate thousands of coins. If each one contains 1/10th of an ounce of silver, and let's say, hypothetically, 10,000 coins have been struck, it comes to 1000 ounces of silver (at about $6 or $7 per ounce). That means you'd need 100 bars like these to do it. So $6000 of silver and a couple hundred dollars of nickel and copper to make 10,000 coins, plus some cheap late night TV spots, and they gross $200,000. Nice racket.

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?

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.

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 .

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.

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

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 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.

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"

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