ICTA builds team to fight for all of us

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A letter arrived on my desk yesterday with some news in it.

David Crenshaw is resigning his position as general manager of the Whitman Coin & Collectibles Expo in order to take the position of chief operating officer of the Industry Council for Tangible Assets as of Nov. 22.

This came as quite a surprise for me.

It was only in the Nov. 5 issue of Numismatic News that the news broke that ICTA had hired a new executive director. Kathy J. McFadden was chosen to succeed Eloise Ullman. McFadden took full charge as of Nov. 1 after working for a month with Ullman as part of the changeover process.

The surprise was not that ICTA would want to hire Crenshaw. I have worked with him for years and I have always found him to be top notch at what he does.

I am glad to see the ICTA board agrees with my assessment.

However, the surprise comes from the fact that for three decades ICTA has often worked on a shoestring budget.

The chief operating officer is an entirely new position.

This signals that the ICTA budget is not scrimping as much as it has previously. It also means the leadership is building up a team to meet the challenges of representing the numismatic community in both Washington, D.C., and in state capitals around the country.

ICTA has proved itself to be a vital part of numismatics. Its efforts to educate the nation’s coin dealers in the intricacies of the anti-money laundering laws to assure their compliance are worth all the money ever spent by ICTA on anything.

But ICTA is far more than that.

It has helped win exemptions from sales tax on coin and bullion transactions in various states. It has lobbied Congress. ICTA is the eyes and ears of many in numismatics.

Crenshaw is a great addition to the ICTA team. My only regret is I will no longer be able to work with him on matters regarding the Baltimore expo three times a year. But that is a small sacrifice considering the greater good of numismatics. I wish him all the best and I look forward to working with him in his new role.

Coin collectors often feel this type of news is of little consequence for them because so much of what ICTA does is unseen. What does an average collector care if dealers comply with anti-money laundering laws, or whether a state exempts from sales tax coin and bullion transactions? They should care.

Even though they don’t think about it, collectors are the first to become indignant when a dealer tells them he must charge sales tax. Some high rollers are the first to be upset if they are told they can’t use a series of cash purchases to avoid alerting the IRS that they are spending more than $10,000 in cash.

It is ICTA’s challenge to try to eliminate the state sales taxes and to keep dealers from violating the law for someone who is waving cash at them.