Thanks lehigh. That is exactly how i remember teletrade auctions. It's a shame that Doug has to put out these half truths to try to impress people. What a shame.
http://coincollector.org/archives/002294.html "The 2,000th sale was a "Sunday Rainbow Auction", literally our most colorful and one of our most popular specialty collecting categories with almost every coin offered toned or rainbow-hued. The Rainbow Auctions are conducted quarterly. Premier and Contemporary Classics sales are held each month featuring, respectively, the finest and rarest United States coins and modern rarities from the 1930s to the present."
Why didn't you bold face the line before the one you did? It clearly states what Lehigh said. Almost. Every. Coin. Is. Toned OR Rainbow. What is with this blind, unexplainable need to defend someone else in the face of opposing facts?
Really didn't know that I was defending anyone, unless you are referring to the integrity of this thread. It is a shame that grown men can't act as such.
45 auctions a quarter with one out of 45 designated for toned coins. My memories of teletrade are any coin with the slightest color, was designated rainbow toned. They were not auctioning 1000s of monster rainbow toned coins every time.
1/45 =2.2%. Funny how no matter what twists and turns we take the math keeps bringing us back to very low single digit populations of coins.
The 1% figure is accurate. On that "1/45 = 2.2%" math, each "rainbow toned auction" wasn't 100% all toned coins. The lot numbers, or missing lot numbers, reveal that. So if you take that 2.2% and then multiply it by the percentage of coins in the rainbow specific auction, lets say more than half, like 60% (2.2% x .60 = 1.32%)....that 1% figure pulled from ebay is a random sample of a population by the rule of statistics with "n" being a number >150,000, it supports a very accurate population. And finding this new number between 2.2% or 1.32% means that the ratio has been STEADY over the years. No year is seeing any massive influx because....because....because.....there are so few of them, in general, in total, in existence. They are the rarer of the population.
Really. I offer a thought of how folks can find information on the topic and you come back at me with that. I don't need to search for it, I lived it. Did you? I'll ask a few friends that also lived it and report what they had to say.
If we are going to get all technical we should be extremely accurate, and if my gradeschool math serves me correctly, 3 auctions a week per quarter would be closer to 39. . And while we are being accurate and assuming that all the coins in a specialty auction for toned coins aren't toned, let's not assume that all the coins in the other auctions aren't all blast white. I believe that if there wasn't a big profit in toned coins, that the executives of Teletrade wouldn't have went to the trouble to hold a special auction just for them, unless they were thinking along the lines of dumping unsold inventory once a quarter. But wait that couldn't be it because the quote above said it was one of their most popular categories, musta been the $10 coins he mentioned.
Again not all toned coins are rainbow toned, and only the latter are the subject of this thread. I think this is the third time this point has been brought up. Also, no one denied profitability of rainbow toners.
I have had a really hard time following hommers line of logic, comprehending his conclusions drawn, etc. I feel like if I asked him his favorite number the answer would be "yellow".
I believe the point was that rainbow toned coins certified by TPGs can't be Artificially Toned or they would state so. From what I've read, these auctions were of certified coins. No one has addressed the point that the TPGs don't backup their toning determinations with a checkbook.
My logic is tied to the point of this thread. This whole argument about numbers was brought about by the Rainbow collectors who disputed that Artificially Toned coins can get past the TPGs all encompassing eyes and that to do so would take a chemical degree and a pocket full of money. Some people still deny that there was ever a man put on the moon.
The auctions in question don't bear onto the question at all and not a single person, unless I am missing something, has come forward and expressly challenged any of those items as AT. I still find the logic to be weak. And the last sentence is certainly a topic of worthy of discussion, but again, in my opinion, it misses the point of this thread. To be sure, the TPGs aren't going to pay a toning premium.
I cannot tell whether this is directed towards me or not, but none of the recent comments were meant to be snarky at all. The posts were factual. With that said, sometimes it's difficult to realize how one may come off in dry message board prose.
There were times when there were 4 auctions per week. In fact, there were was a time when they had 5-6 auctions per week. You can take my word for it, or you can ask me to prove it. Let me know which you prefer! Nobody ever said that there wasn't profit in rainbow toned coins. But the practice employed by Teletrade was to used rainbow toning as a marketing tool designed to attract bidders and boost prices. They did this by assigning the RAINBOW tag to many many coins that did not deserve the designation. We have heard several posters allude to this earlier in the thread, I'm pretty sure Coinchemistry has mentioned it more than once. But nothing really puts this type of thing into perspective like a good example can. I purchased both of these Jefferson Nickels in December of 2009 from a Teletrade auction and both were given the RAINBOW tag. Alas, I did not save the TT photos, so you will have to decide on your own whether I have good enough credibility to believe that these coins actually came from a Teletrade auction. But if you do decide to believe me, would you call these two coins "RAINBOW TONED?" That is not what was said in the first part of this thread. Nobody, including me, disputes that some AT coins have gotten past the graders at NGC or PCGS. What the pro-toning crowd has claimed is that it is not easy to get an AT coin past the graders. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that there have been times where both services have paid for mistakes related to toning. I would also be willing to be that the owner of the coin was compensated for the price guide price without any premium. Once you have paid a premium for an AT coin in TPG plastic, the only way to recoup your investment is to pass it along to another unsuspecting collector. The pro-toning people have pointed out on many occasions that if it were easy to fool the TPGs with respect to toning, the rainbow toned coin market would be saturated with such coins. This led to a discussion about the availability of rainbow toned coins. Doug made a general statement that rainbow toned coins are "common" but never provided any other proof than, I have seen it with my own eyes at coin shows. The pro-toning crowd then proved that rainbow toned coins are not common by showing that the percentage of rainbow toned coins to total is <1%. What hasn't happened is anyone in the anti-toning crowd challenging the math and providing their own proof. Will you be the one to do so?