Dear CCF Members,
It's a bit surprising to me that I would make my first introduction to you all in response to such an odd topic, but it seems like I might be able to address some of the concerns regarding the Shanghai Ghetto program, but before getting to that, I'll offer a quick introduction.
My name is Michael Lertchitvikul, and along with Ken Park, a 20 year veteran of PCGS, and Justin Park, one of the leading young numismatists in US and Modern Chinese Coins, I am a co-founder of the KMJ Group. We are a Christian, faith-centered firm that specializes primarily in investment quality coins, specifically, ultra-high grade and highest graded specimens in Vintage US, Chinese, and World Coins, as well as key MCC Rarities. As someone who is ethnically Chinese, has Jewish Godparents, and has studied Jewish culture and Hebrew (I know my Shema!), I am particularly honored that my firm is one of the primary distributors of the Shanghai Ghetto Program.
As a small plug for Stacks Bowers, my father, Nirat Lertchitvikul, is their Director of Asian Operations and responsible for all things Asia-Pacific, including their Hong Kong Auction. If you are ever looking to consign coins to an auction house, feel free to let me know and I'll be happy to refer you to him directly.
As many of you know, the Chinese mints have stopped sealing via the capsule/plastic pouch method for quite some time now. As many MCC collectors have a strong preference for the former sealing procedure, I advised the co-designer of this program, Danny Spungen, to ask the mint to go back to the former sealing method. Frankly, the method of sealing really had zero significance to my company, as we are almost exclusively concentrating on the distribution of certified SGMs, but the suggestion was made to try to cater to the preferences of the MCC community.
Unfortunately, the sealing job done by the Shanghai Mint was a completely inadequate one, with many of the plastic sheets left improperly or partially sealed. There were sheets of SGMs that that had extremely poor internal sealing such that several SGMs would slide out of their slot into one pouch. When delivered, Danny saw the issue and took it upon himself to personally purchase a sealing machine (I think he spent upwards of $7,000) so that he could properly secure the SGMs in place and protect them from bouncing against each other when transported. There were several opportunities to reseal the sheets using more deceptive methods that would have made it appear as if they were perfectly sealed, but as there was no intent to deceive, they were sealed in a way that the differences to the original sealing were abundantly apparent.
I understand that some customers may be upset that they are buying a product that was not perfectly packaged according to their standards, and I also realize that full disclosure about all the headaches Danny had to put up with would have been appreciated earlier rather than later, but I hope the MCC community understands that there were no malicious attempts to deceptively reseal the product. Going forward, I think I will suggest to Danny that it would probably be best to just have the mint ship out the coins in the tray-style packaging that they have been using over the past few years and completely avoid the drama surrounding sealed and resealed pouches!
If any of you would like to contact Danny himself to verify this account of our product, he is available for contact directly at
Danny@whynotcollectibles.com. Additionally, if there are ever any concerns with any project that my company is associated with, I would be more than happy to field any questions or concerns regarding that program directly. You are welcome to contact me at
Michael@theKMJGroup.com - with any luck, I'll be able to spare you from all the rampant speculations on what kind of foul play may be taking place. I trust that with transparency, we can reintroduce some of the joy back into collecting!
Best regards,
Michael Lertchitvikul
Chief Operations Officer
The KMJ Group
