National Collector's Mint

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The National Collector's Mint is a company based in Port Chester, New York that produces novelty commemorative coins. Notable recent coins include replica gold 1933 Double Eagle coins and a 2004 Freedom Tower Silver Dollar coin representing the World Trade Center and proposed Freedom Tower. The company does not produce coins that are legal tender in the United States; that role falls to the United States Mint alone.

Sales of the Freedom Tower coins were halted by a court order in October 2004 at the request of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.^[1] The company had claimed that the coins were "government-authorized" by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. As a United States Commonwealth, however, the CNMI is not authorized to issue its own currency, yet this did not stop the island government from collecting royalties from the sale of the bogus coins. The company also claimed the coins were made using pure silver collected from the destroyed World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Spitzer said that although the company claimed the coins were worth $49, they were in fact worth "a cent and a half"; a judge ruled in 2004 that the company was guilty of fraud, false advertising and deceptive business.^[2]

Though Barry Goldwater Jr. is often used as a spokesman by the company, National Collector's Mint is actually owned by Avram C. Freedberg. Freedberg is also the owner of companies Biologic Solutions and Maximum Entertainment Productions. All three companies list their address as being 8 Slater Street, Port Chester NY 10573. ^[3]