The Late Great Toned Coin Lie

You and kurt are most wise. Gut feeling is that im not going with all dipped. Lets be honest. Kurts point is valid. There's no way to prove him wrong. Plus i believe he thinks from a higher level of intelligents. Alien@V. Kurt Bellman

 

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Let's not get carried away, now. I'll cop to iconoclast and contrarian to the accepted order. Whenever "90% agree", I immediately suspect I'm being conned. This hobby is just too darned prone to repeat nonsense they heard from someone else. Not enough "assume it's all bull". And most of it is bull for the identical reason - MARKETING, aka creating demand for what somebody has got to sell.

 

Whether you conduct your business on the Internet or face to face in a brick and mortar coin shop does not make one honest or dishonest. Its your values (or lack thereof) that do that. As an Internet business I think we are held to a higher standard as many more people see what we have for sale rather than what is for sale in the local coin shop. Just my opinion .........

 

Large operations like APMEX are a different kettle of fish. I have bought A FEW pieces there, with all the confidence I need. The small "mom and pop", or rather "son living in mom and pop's basement" Internet dealers are the problem. And they are proliferating like flies on ...

 

I think the key is how the coins were stored. Folks who state that older coins are all toned are correct that single coins, not protected from the environmental conditions of airflow, humidity, and temperature will indeed tone fairly quickly. Coins in a controlled environment, with low airflow around them, take much much longer to tone. You see this effect in rolls as well. I've opened OBW Cent rolls from the 30's and they were pristine (I've also seen 30's rolls that were disasters of toning and corrosion). Once a coin is removed from these ideal conditions, if they are properly cared for they will continue to stay fresh, but the storage methods of the past for single coins were not very protective.

Now my soapbox...I feel it's the responsibility of the honest folks to train the new generation of collectors to recognize fake toning for what it is...a deceitful, destructive, and fraudulent practice. It's not so difficult to recognize coins that have been intentionally toned, though some of these fraudsters have gotten good enough that it's hard to be 100% sure. I'm pretty sure I am at 99.9% for bronze, and maybe 90% for 20th Century silver. Most of the experienced folks here are probably even better at silver, and may have a good success rate for 19th Century silver and copper. It's important for the hobby that the intentionally-toned garbage be called-out for what it is.

 

I wish I could give post #45 about 1,000 likes. At the last (as in ever) Philly Whitman show, one guy had a fresh roll of 1929-D Mercury dimes that had never been opened until he got to that show. The edges were near black, but the obverse and reverse looked like they were minted yesterday. They were laid out as "Better half" and "Lesser half". I bought a "better", and it has been in near-optimal storage ever since. Still. No. Toning.


I ALSO own pristine rolls of cents from the 30's and 40's. I have moved them to inert tubes from the original paper.

 

The old coppers that turned up during the '30s were the same way. Those that were in the middle of the bags stayed pristine, whrereas those by the surface darkened. So, if you want to keep your coins pristine, you need to have 1,000 of them and keep them in a bag in a vault. Doesn't that sound like fun?

 

Yes, being in the middle of 1,000 of your best friends and neighbors is a wonderful ACCIDENTAL method of remaining pristine. My point is, and has always been, that there are myriad INTENTIONAL ways of keeping toning from affecting a coin. What is utterly bizarre is rewarding those who HAVE NOT TAKEN REASONABLE PRECAUTIONS to keep a coin untoned or toned less, to the detriment of those who have. It's Bizarro World!

And the "Official Lie of the Slovenly" is used to perpetuate it, i.e. "If it's old and white, it's been dipped."

 

But... one more person offers the false binary choice. I hardly ever use EITHER of these sources. I am REALLY tired of people who think I must be dealing with brick and mortar dealers if I disdain the Internet. Wake up and look around. Virtually ALL of my collecting methods share one goal - Eliminate the middleman.

 

Rainbow toning was the focus of this thread, you did no harm posting an example. If you needed a specific query answered, or change the subject, then you should start a new thread...Spark

 

The supply didn't expand, dealers that kept them instead of dipping them simply started to include them in their inventory. If you had ever purchased toned coins, you would know that dealers used to keep them hidden and produce them on request. Since the majority of collectors wanted blast white coins, dealers did not spend valuable display case real estate trying to sell toned coins that only a few collectors were interested in. Rainbow toned Morgans have been around for decades, decades I tell ya.

 

Interesting observation Kurt. After reading the Coin World article my only thoughts were what affect such a large find would have on prices, but Mikes comments in post #5 seem to negate my concerns. Thanks for sharing a different perspective.

 

Yup, there’s that, and also this:

Is anyone else troubled by the marks by the chin and behind the hair at MS67? They may be getting “special hoard grading standards”.

 

Yeah, troubled but not surprised.

 

So, going door-to-door? An auctioneer is a middleman, and those Amish heirs still aren't likely to put things up on Craigslist...

 

No an auctioneer is NOT a middleman. He never owns the property. He merely provides a service. There also are coin club transactions, and individual collector to collector transactions facilitated by participation in coin clubs (of which I attend numerous).

 

You are being silly, that coin is an MS67 all day long. If you don't believe me, crop the coin out and start a guess the grade thread and see how many members say MS67.

 

I bet Doug doesn’t. For me, it depends on what the reverse shows. It needs to be clean for me to go 7.

 

Whenever Doug grades a coin, I add 2 grades to get to the TPG grade, I bet he calls that Morgan MS65.

 

Sure he does. When he stopped looking, all there was was 60, 65, and 70.