The Industry Council for Tangible Assets (ICTA) director of industry affairs, Diane Piret, received the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award at the PNG annual awards banquet on August 4, 2014.

Piret has been actively involved with numismatics and precious metals for more than 40 years, and has worked with ICTA since 1989 on local, state, and federal legislative matters affecting the profession and hobby. She has also been a crusader for dealer education.

Michael Fuljenz, ICTA board member and president of Universal Coin & Bullion, received the PNG Significant Contribution Award. In recent years, Fuljenz has done extensive consumer-protection work to alert the public about so-called “hotel buyers,” who often pay only pennies on the dollar for rare coins. 

He has also made great contributions to the profession and PNG in his successful efforts with ICTA to combat onerous tax legislation that would have significantly affected retail transactions involving rare coins and bullion coins in Texas, and he has assisted efforts to enact industry-friendly tax legislation in Louisiana as well.

The Professional Numismatists Guild is a nonprofit trade association composed of the country's top rare-coin and paper-money dealers, who must adhere to a strict code of ethics in the buying and selling of numismatic merchandise.