James L. Halperin

James L. Halperin (born October 31, 1952) is an American businessman and author, who is the co-founder and co-chairman of Heritage Auctions. In 1985 Halperin authored a text on grading coins, How to Grade U.S. Coins, upon which the grading standards of the grading services PCGS and NGC were ultimately based. He is the author of two futurist fiction books, The Truth Machine (1996) and The First Immortal (1997), which were in 2001 both chosen by PC Magazine in a survey put out to their online newsletter subscribers, as possible responses for the top 17 science/technology fiction books of the previous 20 years.[1] The Truth Machine is currently under development as a motion picture by Morgan Freeman's Revelations Entertainment. He and his businesses have been sued by federal agencies (including the FTC) multiple times for fraud, among other allegations, where he was ordered to pay substantial fees.[2]

Early life

Halperin was born on October 31, 1952 in Boston, Massachusetts to a lower middle class Jewish family.[3] At the age of 13 Halperin created a fraud mail-order advertising business that took out ads in magazines looking for people who would pay to join his nonexistent sales network, a scheme that later drew the attention of the United States Postal Inspection Service. Halperin would end up avoiding charges for his mail fraud in exchange for returning $100,000 of the stolen money.[4] Halperin graduated from Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts in 1970, then attended Harvard University between 1970 and 1971 where he majored in psychology and later philosophy. After three semesters, Halperin dropped out to pursue a career in numismatics.

Career

In 1971 he established a rare coin fund for investors, New England Rare Coin Fund (NERCF).[5] In 1982, he sold NERCF to a former employee which later went bankrupt in 1987 after the FTC charged Willis for fraud for misrepresenting coins he had oversold. During the period Willis was allegedly engaged with fraud he paid Halperin around $1 million consulting fees. Halperin would later return some of the money, and claims that he wasn't involved in any bad deeds and that the money he got from Willis was part of the terms of his sale.[4]

In 1982 Halperin entered into a 50/50 business partnership with renowned numismatist-turned-businessman Steve Ivy and settled in Dallas, Texas. Halperin and Ivy still co-direct Heritage Auctions, of Dallas, Texas, which advertises itself as the world's largest rare coin company and largest auction house founded in America (2018 sales above $800 million).

In 1984, Halperin founded the Coin grading agency Numismatic Certification Institute which later went out of business after the FTC found that Halperin was giving inflated grades to coins and marketing them through a Heritage auctions-backed outfit called Certified Rare Coin Galleries which thru Infomercials which sold high-grade silver and gold U.S. coins for more than twice their actual value. In 1989 Heritage Auctions agreed to pay $1.2 million in restitution and Halperin continues to insist that most of the coin grades he gave during those times would hold up today.[4]

A profile on Halperin appeared in Forbes in 2004,[4] to which Halperin posted an annotated (clarified and/or corrected in footnotes) version on Heritage's website.[6]

In 2019, Halperin along with Zac Gieg, the founder and owner of Just Press Play Video Games, and video game collector Rich Lecce purchased a copy of Super Mario Bros from Nintendo's test market launch in 1985 from his Heritage auctions auction house for $100,150 which at the time set a new auction world record for a graded video game.[7]

Personal life

Halperin also endows The James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, which supports health and education-related charities.

He has been married to his wife Gayle since 1984 and they have two sons, David (born 1991) and Michael (born 1995).

His niece is Molly DeWolf Swenson, American Idol Season 10 contestant and co-founder of RYOT (sold to Huffington Post / AOL in 2016).

References
  1. "PC Magazine Survey". Archived from the original on 2016-03-25. Retrieved 2017-09-01.
  2. Helman, Christopher. "Top Drawer". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
  3. "Jim Halperin's Speech At The Dallas Business Club". Heritage Auctions. Archived from the original on 2021-08-25. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  4. Helman, Christopher. "Top Drawer". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2021-08-23. Retrieved 2021-08-23.
  5. "PCGS.com article by Halperin discussing NERCF". Archived from the original on 2011-06-14. Retrieved 2009-06-14.
  6. Halperin, Jim What Forbes Didn't Tell You Archived 2021-09-01 at the Wayback Machine
  7. Orland, Kyle (2019-02-15). "Why is this copy of Super Mario Bros. worth $100,000? We asked a buyer". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2021-08-26. Retrieved 2021-08-23.
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