A freelancer again by 1990, at the beginning of the following year I launched the DAVID R. SEAR ANCIENT COIN CERTIFICATION SERVICE(ACCS). This service was established to provide collectors with a cataloguing service of the very highest professional standards, at realistic cost, and may be accessed on this site. In November of 1993 I formed a business partnership with Rob Freeman, formerly a colleague at Numismatic Fine Arts. For almost a decade we were very active in the ancient coin market, both in the US and in Europe. In 1995 we collaborated with Frank Sternberg AG to stage a major public auction in Zurich, Switzerland, and from 1997 we collaborated with Classical Numismatic Group (CNG) to stage the annual ‘Triton’ auctions at the New York International (NYINC). With Rob Freeman’s business now well-established, by the end of the 1990s my involvement in the business side of the partnership had virtually ceased, though I still undertook occasional auction cataloging assignments. These were on behalf of collaborations between Rob Freeman and various dealers, such as Harlan Berk, in staging auctions at numismatic conventions. Other recent activities have included a bimonthly column on ancient numismatics in The Numismatist, the publication of the American Numismatic Association (ANA). In August 1996 this received the ‘Best Column’ award from the Numismatic Literary Guild (NLG) at the ANA Convention in Denver.
