The Toning Premium Thread

Ditto!

Chris

 

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I will try $3000 for that coin.

 

I guess I am one of those who "don't know about toners" even though I was collecting them 30 years ago and am very familiar with their progression, reversibility, underlying damage, ways to AT, etc. I think maybe you mean "don't know about the toned coin market for the last few years", that is very fair. Collecting toned coins is not new, and has been done about as long as coin collecting has been around. Its just the pricing mechanism that has changed.

What I was hoping to learn is if there was a methodology besides wild guesses as to pricing mechanisms in this market. Is there a toning "grade" by series for certain coloration? Everyone talks about 5x, 10x, 20x book value, does that apply regardless of the book price? What if the above Morgan was a 1889cc or 1893s? Is this market more similar to error coin pricing, which pays for the error regardless of the date, since I cannot imagine it being consistent multiples of list price regardless of date. Is the pricing basically, $200 for the coin, $1800 for the color instead of 10x book? That would make more sense, since if its 10x book, and the book was $30,000, is the coin worth $300,000?

Btw, I just wanted to say I posted this question simply based upon having 60 pages of conversations, it had nothing to do with the last couple of examples, which were very pretty.

 

Several ideas have been posted here more than once by experienced toner collectors which have been helpful to me as a new person to the field. The main one is that the toning premium tends to be inversely proportional to the value of the coin due to grade or date rarity; i.e., a 63 will fetch more of a toning premium proportionally to its value than a 67 and an '80-S Morgan will fetch more of a premium relative to its value than an '80 CC. I have the sense, again as a new person, that this is probably as reliable (if one could call it that) a methodology as one could get, because otherwise it's based on eye appeal—taste—and, as they say, there's no accounting for it!

PS: I'm being facetious about taste, of course; I certainly believe experience can hone it.

Also, there is the knowledge gained through experience of what kinds of toning (perhaps in combination with date or strike) are rarer than others; didn't mean to leave that out. All in all, it seems that extreme familiarity with the market is the only real way to form any kind of dependable sense of worth.

 

My 2 Cents

First, I don't collect US coins at all but I have been following this thread since page 1, I found it absolutely fascinating (and the coins are gorgeous, everyone). Some of you guys may disagree with my opinion of what should be taken away from this thread, but this is what I'm taking away from this all (and it's a universal theme, not just US coins):

At a certain point, coins cross over from the super-quantitative realm of Krauses's prices and grading scale points to the realm of artwork. And that's when most efforts to figure out a way to predict prices fails. I don't see anything wrong with people spending $10 on a toner and people spending $5000 on a toner, it's personal preference. There's people who are bidding millions on Picasso and Rembrandt because it's a unique piece of art to them (even though I wouldn't), and I think toner collectors have pieces that are absolutely unique. What I'm learning from this thread is that coins can cross over to art sometimes, and there's no way to quantify most of them. Which isn't a bad thing :smile Looking forward to seeing more coins!!!!

 

4K at least

 

That's a very interesting thought, and I apologize in advance for answering you with a question:

Why would the toning market be able to provide a methodology that the coin market in general has been unable to provide?

Cynicism aside, and while it may fall short of a methodology, there are many rules to be found in the toner market. Frankly, I'd be surprised if you didn't know them already:

1) Modern top-pops with wild toning sell for very large premiums
2) Morgans and Commems with wild toning sell for very large premiums
3) Type coins and coins with common toning sell for lower premiums
4) The most eye appealing coins sell for the most.
5) Thin markets where every coin is slightly different are practically impossible to predict.
6) If the right two buyers are bidding on a coin and they both want it, throw out the price guides.

That tangent aside, you ask a very good question too, IMO:

Interestingly enough, you will note that I do not use the Xx book value notation that Lehigh champions. I think your way of looking at it is good (i.e. dollar value rather than multiple), but I believe that there's an even better way, by comparing the coin's price to the same coin in different grades. While this breaks down when evaluating top-pop coins (which is what Lehigh tends to collect, and may explain why he solved the same problem the way he did), it works very well for coins somewhere below top grade. I have found this to be a much better way to look at and predict prices, particularly for type coins (which is my primary collecting interest in toners). My suspicion is that Shane simply does it from experience because he watches more of these things than most.

But in the end, valuing a coin is a lot of "gut feeling" (honed by experience) and a little "methodology", and what and how you collect/buy/sell will shape how you answer the question of valuation.

 

$3333 as a collector of Morgans....wow

 

That coin is fantastic. $4,500.

 

It think this sums things up really well, and not just for toners. And it makes me think of one of my favorite (anonymous) quotes, "Good judgement comes from experience. And experience, well, that comes from bad judgement."

 

I'm new. I would have to guess around $325. I've seen a few coins like that and I think they look unnatural like they were heated for a bit with a torch. Don't know how they get to look that way but I would like to learn the straight story.
John

 

I think it has been well established that the toning premium in multiples of the base price is inversely proportional to that base price. If an MS64 Morgan Dollar has the same toning as an MS67 Morgan, the toning premium in multiples will be much higher for the MS64 but the total price will still be higher for the MS67. I don't think you can ever develop hard and fast rules for pricing toned coins. There are just too many variables. If certain coins within a series are more difficult to locate with color, that coin may demand more of a premium, but only to the small number of collectors who are actually trying compete a toned series set. In my experience, most toned coin collectors don't care about date/mm, they just want toned coins. Heck, I own 20 rainbow toned 1881-S Morgan Dollars.

Regarding the varied guesses you are seeing in this thread, you need to remember a few things. Some of the people in this thread who are guessing are basically students of the game and don't really have a firm grasp of pricing toned coins.....YET! Also, keep in mind that many of the people posting coins are actively trying to fool the guessers. That is not really in the spirit of the thread, but there is no way to stop it as people are proud of the fact that they got a coin at a bargain price. Lastly, the mindset of the people guessing needs to be discussed. I think Shane is very good a pricing toned coins, but his guesses in many cases have been a little low. I really think he is pricing them using current market conditions and not necessarily the conditions at the time of purchase. Furthermore, he is pricing them from a sellers perspective which is basically what he can expect to sell the coin for. This will lead to lower guesses because it ignores both auction fever and the mindset of the individual who posted the coin. The latest Mercury Dime is a perfect example. Baha and I posted nearly identical coins that sold for $27 & $75 respectively. It shouldn't surprise anybody that I paid 3X more for a coin than Baha and it explains why he doesn't own a lot of toners. He obviously doesn't place as much of a premium on toning as I and many others do. As a result, he will be outbid often on toned coins.

Your last sentence leads me to believe that you are of the camp that the toned coin market is a fad and that you were hoping this thread could convince you that there is a solid foundation to support the premiums associated with toned coins. Most of the coins posted in this thread had a very small premium related to the toning. That is actually very representative of reality. Most toning is considered neutral and has very little effect on price. It is rare that the toning creates the eye appeal necessary to drive a premium. If it was not rare, nobody would pay that premium.

If you want a foundation for the toning premium, this is the best explanation I can give you. None of us are responsible for creating the premium prices for toned coins. Those prices are generated by the open market which relies on supply and demand. Currently, the number of toned coins in relation to the number of collectors who desire toned coins is such that they will often drive significant premiums. These conditions are a function of two factors, improvements in digital photography and the internet. Now that a child can whip out a point and shoot and post a quality photograph of a rainbow toned coin on E-Bay, the exposure that these coins have is unlimited. Now think back 10 years. Even the largest auction houses like Heritage had trouble displaying the eye appeal of toned coins. As a result, they did not drive the same premiums because nobody knew about them. Well the secret is out and we can't put it back.

The only way to change it now is if either the supply goes up or the demand goes down. Since toning takes decades under most conditions, the only real threat on the supply side is Artificial Toning. Since eye appeal never goes out of style, the only threat on the demand side is the authenticity of the toning, in other words, Artificial Toning. More to the point, the demand for toned coins will drop when collectors lose confidence in the TPG's to weed out AT coins during the grading process.

We are in the midst of the worst economic recession since the great depression and the toned coin market has not collapsed. Prices have dropped some, but not anymore or less than any other are of numismatics IMO. The dreck (common material with common toning) has taken the biggest hit, but the higher graded coins with great eye appeal have done much better and will likely continue to do so.

I think a good way to summarize the thread would be to take all of the photos and post them in order of smallest premium (in multiples of base price) to largest premium. Once you do that, I think the visual impact of the quality of toning and foundation for the premiums will become evident.

 

Maruader,

That coin you posted (your avatar) is a trophy coin in the toned coin world. People like to throw the word monster around, that coin actually deserves the title. IMO, it would compete with the finest Sonnier or Battlecreek. IIRC, the highest price I have ever seen an MS66 Battlecreek listed was $6K, I will make that my guess.

 

thank you for that Leigh! It really means a lot to me for someone to appreciate a coin as much as I do. It might not be the highest graded coin out there, but I think it holds it own with a lot of other coins.

 

Well oval_man wins it! I paid $5,000 for it last year

 

I saw my name thrown around a few times and I actually agree with the assessments made about how I came up with my price guesses if you will. Certainly there were some nice coins won for bargain prices in this thread and there were some monster coins that sold for even more monster prices. In most examples based solely on current market conditions people overpaid or underpaid according to what I think the market would support but as mentioned these coins weren't all bought in today's market which adds to the swings in price guesses.

I personally don't know the basal or book value of a lot of the coins I bid on and win at auction I simply use my memory to determine what similar coins have sold for and I base my bids on that knowledge and I win some and I lose some. Most of my prices paid guesses were coming from the seller side of me vs the collector side and as pointed out.....they will be much lower due to that fact. As a collector I will pay just about anything for the right coin but as a seller I have to buy coins at a price where their is still profit to be had.....so yes some of my coins posted were tricky in the sense that I knew I underpaid for the coins

While the methodologies used in this thread may be different for every collector I don't think there are any right or wrong ways to come up with a price. It's very very simple and I will outline below:

#1 As a collector you pay whatever you feel comfortable paying and not a penny more. You will never be upset with yourself even when it comes time to sell...you paid what you wanted to pay and nobody can tell you that you paid too much if you could afford the coin and you enjoy having it in your collection. Note: this will not be the philosophy of an investor as paying too much means losses down the road.

#2 As a seller/dealer you pay below full retail price so that there is still some meat left on the bone when it comes time to sell. To be successful at this you better have a pretty good idea of current market conditions so you don't end up losing money by overpaying someone elses full retail price.

#3 We all have a choice on what we are willing to pay based on what we like....one collector may value a coin at $100 and the next may value it at $500....neither is wrong if it's for their own personal collection.

 

After the last couple of beauties I need to bring this down to a humble level. Here's a subtle one, barely a toner. I had to have it; had never seen this combination of purple and gold before; looks regal to me. MS67 CAC, obverse is PL, very nice in hand. I picked this up on Heritage in October, so don't look there! To pace the thread a bit (and let us salivate more over each of Marauder's coins), I'll post the price late morning tomorrow.

 

thanks oval_man! Im just getting started hehe.

im going to guess you paid 1050 for that nice coin

 

$800 for the 1879-S as I assume that clean cheek would have raised the price from a typical common date in MS67 which can be had for around $600. I didn't addd anything for a toning premium as I don't think the coin warrants it. All and all a very attractive frosty specimen.

 

$750