Nobody can deny that some toned coins are just beautiful, but have you considered what the future holds for your coins? Will a beautifully toned coin that carries a high premium today degrade to a terminal black state over time and loose the majority of its value? I ask this because, as many of you know, I am a fourth generation collector who takes care of a collection that has been ongoing for nearly 140 years. As such, I worry that that buying toned coins may not be such a great idea. For instance, will this beautiful 1878-CC... (The coin that my couch stole) look like this by the time my great grandchildren inherit this collection? It is the stuff of nightmares.
Lets hope not although I've seen 200+ year old silver with amazing color I bid on a stunningly toned 1803 half about a year ago it brought around 12k in ms don't remember the exact grade 62? Perhaps proper storage is key and I see many nice circulated early siler coins in that beautiful slate gray which I find ideal for them
But seriously I do have similar concerns myself. The last post was intended as a funny, but seriously what's the key to preserving our collections for our hopeful future generations sake?
This will most likely come down to the storage method used to conserve the collection. A sulfur-free airtight coin holder would help slow the toning process quite a bit, such as what is used by the grading companies today. Though all silver will most likely succumb to the saddening black state at some point in the distant future... -Mike
My question then is, how did the coins that are still in remarkable shape from 100-150+ years ago maintain their color and 'vibrancy' for lack of a better term? Aren't ziplocks, and airtites a rather new invention? How did the 'old' generations preserve their coins without all these fancy new inert plastics and such? Did they have silica packs in the 1840s? I'm actually curious to this answer? How did they preserve the coins so dang well in some instances?
I would imagine that most of the vibrantly toned coins from 150+ years ago have either been previously dipped or otherwise cleaned or they were stored in what we might call fortuitous conditions that allowed a combination of rather stable temperature, low relative humidity and little air flow. Regardless, there are astonishingly few US coins from 150+ years ago that are vibrantly toned. The coins we have today stand a much better chance at long term preservation in or near their current state since toning is affected greatly by the continued exposure of the coinage metal to conditions conducive to toning. The advent of climate control, both temperature and relative humidity, as well as fairly inert plastics or other holders will allow for coins present today to stay close to their appearance for perhaps many hundreds of years.
What about the ancient silver coins that still look good? They've been around for quite a while and remain in remarkable condition.
It was the subject of this old thread. http://www.cointalk.com/threads/some-therapy-my-friends.216383/
Living in New Orleans, heat and humidity is a major concern. I take most every precaution that I can take, but it is almost impossible for me to keep any cents red. After my collection was under twelve feet of water for two weeks following Katrina, some friends at NCS conserved the collection and put them back in intercept shield albums (for free!). Since then, almost every previously red cent has turned one color or another. This is the reason that I have been having albums with air-tites made for my nicer sets. Plus these are going to be some pretty sweet albums.
I think many that survived in remarkable condition were either kept in a desk drawer a bank vault or a safe away from air and oxidation being an antique furniture dealer and restorer you will sometimes see drawers insides of blanket chests desk interior drawers etc that the wood looks practically new and unused due to them being kept closed and not exposed to air likewise the objects inside including coins didn't get any oxidation or air exposure this explains many of the remarkable survivors from the 18th and early 19th c
Many woods release gasses that are not particularly good for a coins preservation. I can see a good old safe as doing the job that you describe though.
Coins that were collected and kept in rolls stayed pretty nice as long as they were stored in somewhat reasonable conditions.
Yes, it will, eventually. Unless at some point in the future somebody actually invents a coin holder is actually airtight. As of today, no such thing exists. But you can preserve your coins, much just like they are today, for your lifetime and maybe your kids' lifetimes - if, big IF, you utilize proper storage methods for that entire time. But, get lax and let even 1 step of proper storage slip away for a few months, or God forbid years, and things are gonna change. Toning to a terminal black state is the natural way of things for coins. And what happens when you try and fight Mother Nature ? Sure, you can fight Her off for a while. But in the end, She's gonna win
I wonder. Can you catch it right before it gets 'terminally' black, dip it, and save it for another XX amount of years? Repeating this cycle until the coin is useless. At that point either way it will be damaged anyway. Either just stages before being terminally black, or continued dipping (even 50-60 years apart) will eventually eat away at the coin. I'm curious still simply because I have a 'blast' white Thaler from the mid-1600s and am curious as to how it's remained silvery so long and even though it isn't a high numerical grade the coin is in awesome condition (IMO). I understand it was probably dipped, so as a coins worsens with toning should we be dipping after a certain point to kind of restart the coins shelf life?
You'd want to do it long before "right before" because toning in its later stages is already eating away at the luster. But yes, there are certainly coins that have been dipped more than once. Absolutely. But there's a bit more to it than that. You see there are many different types and stages of toning. And for a while, the toning in and of itself also helps to protect the coin from additional toning, especially if the coin is being stored under better conditions. There's something that most folks don't realize. That is - what they think is blast white, isn't blast white. That's because toning literally begins after the very moment the coin is struck. Depending on conditions of course, for quite a while you wouldn't even notice the toning. But the coin would be changing color (toning) all along. But it happens so gradually that you can't see it, or perhaps it would be better to say you don't notice it happening. But it is happening, that is a certainty. It's kind of like going to the paint store and telling the guy at the counter that you want some white paint. The first words out if his mouth are going to be - what color white ? We have about 100 different colors of white. Let me show you an example. Would you say this coin is white ? It isn't, and it looked much whiter in hand than it does in those pictures. And had great luster. So was it dipped ? In all probability it likely was at some point in its life. But that's the thing about dipping. If it is done correctly then nobody, and I mean nobody, can say with certainty that it was - except the person that did the dipping. But, anybody that knows coins can reasonably assume that it was dipped. Maybe, but that's a big maybe, and most of the time I'd say flat out, no. And the decision to dip the coin should only be made by those with the necessary experience to make that judgement. And the dipping itself, once the decision is made, should only be done by those with the necessary experience to do it. And quite frankly, there aren't a whole lot of people that have those two things. What you as a collector have to remember is what I said before in this thread, and in many other threads, if you store the coin correctly you will never have to worry about it in your lifetime. About the only exception to that would be if you bought a coin that needed to be dipped before you ever bought it. And if it needed dipped before you bought it, then you shouldn't be buying it in the first place.
I commented once that the only sure way to KNOW that a coin has been cleaned is if you did the cleaning.
That depends on how you define cleaning. If you use the word or words, clean, cleaned, cleaning, the same way I do - then yes I would agree with you to a point. That point being the same one I made about dipping a coin. But for those who use the word or words clean, cleaned, cleaning, to mean harshly/improperly cleaned - those coins can be identified at a glance by those with the proper experience.