F. Michael “Skip” Fazzari

Senior Grader

Skip is an internationally recognized professional numismatist who has been involved with coins in one way or another for most of his life. Skip became a professional numismatist in 1972 when he joined the American Numismatic Association Certification Service (ANACS) . While working for the ANA Certification Service, he served as the Chief Authenticator and taught at the ANA Summer Seminar. While in Washington, he routinely handled numismatic inquiries from the Secret Service, FBI, and the White House.

Since 1972, Skip has been involved in the development of coin authentication and grading. While at ANACS, he developed the “Die Scratch Method” of coin authentication which continues to be used today. He also devised the internal grading standards (Technical Grading) used at ANACS when it was located in Washington, DC and also those used at the International Numismatic Society Authentication Bureau (INSAB) which was the first third-party grading service in the U.S., predating ANACS by six months. As an instructor of the Advanced Grading and Authentication classes for the Institute of Numismatic and Philatelic Studies at Adelphi University in New York, he was elected to the Board of Overseers and given the honor of Distinguished Lecturer in Numismatics. He has been asked to testify as expert witness by the State of New York and the United States Federal Trade Commission.

For over forty-four years, Skip has provided expert services in authentication, grading and conservation of both U.S. and foreign coins. Previously, Skip was the principal numismatist, researcher, and variety specialist at three third party grading services.  Skip joined ICG in 2008 after leaving the Numismatic Conservation Service (NCS), a non-grading division of NGC that Skip helped to establish.

Skip has written columns on grading and authentication for the Numismatist Magazine and currently has a column in Numismatic News.

Skip holds membership in the following professional organizations:

American Numismatic Association: LM#5734

Florida United Numismatists: #21665

Professional Numismatists Guild: #710