Featured Can you define artificial toning ?

While I do remember hearing about fake baseball cards, I do not remember hearing about fake Beanie Babies or tulip bulbs. Toned coins have another problem most collectible crazes don't - a nearly inexhaustible supply of "raw materials" that are perfectly legal.

 

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Well I choose not to believe an entire fallacy. If there were then no TPG or Auction House would touch any toned coins. If we believe all dealers (or individual sellers of coins) are crooks then the hobby needs to fold. There are always a few bad actors in any hobby or endeavor.

There are color combinations that are illogical if not impossible, and these can be sorted out. I believe certified toned coins can be worth a premium, but I would have had a great deal of trouble paying the premiums the Sunnywood Collection drew. But obviously PCGS believed the coins to be genuine, the auction house believed them to be genuine, the sellers believed in them, and finally the buyers arrived at a place that they thought the price was fair.

But then different perspectives is what makes the hobby interesting. Otherwise there would be no premium for rarity, condition, strike, etc. All dimes would be worth ten cents. I believe toning is just one more differentiation between coins that to some adds value.

 

Kurt - Here is a line you can search in google: LA Times "Did you buy a signed Tom Clancy on EBay? Um . . ."

I was the guy that bought the copy they refer to. I had a copy of Patriot Games Tom signed for me in person about 22 years earlier that I used as a reference when I bought this book. I was contacted by the DOJ right after they arrested him to confirm my copy had a forged autograph. The guy only did a few months after scamming people out of over $300K. I reached out to Tom Clancy through multiple sources and could never get the book resigned by him prior to him passing. Out of the 1000 copies printed though I have a somewhat unique story that goes with mine.

What I was more referring to though when I made that comment is that people that make collectibles usually make them to demand or they make just enough to create a rare collectible market. As long as someone is willing to buy, there is going to be a someone willing to make them. IMO: Proving someone can create a toned coin to look like a NT coin is not going to disrupt the market all that much. Those premium buyers already accept that both methods exist and can create desirable/collectible coins.

 

You make a very good point about the inexhaustible supply, but with toned coins there is some level of expertise needed to do the artificial toning. And then toning with tight bands of color, presented in the logical sequence, are difficult to fake.

And then there is the effort factor. I would not spend an hour working to raise the value of a $10 coin by $10. To hit the jackpot you have to raise the value of a top grade coin by a high percentage, and few have that level of expertise. You also run the risk of ruining the raw, high-value, coin and losing it all.

And then there is the easy solution. If you don't like toned coins, don't buy them.

 

Still looking for those free-range all-natural laptops.

 

I'm calling it now: Kurt will not blow the market to smithereens.

Instead, in ten years' time, we'll see the market restrict itself to "Certified Organic" toners.

And my money will be in the Organic Toning Certification Service.

 

In ten years time, the coin hobby will have moved on to a different fétiche du jour.

 

How long have people been collecting rainbow toned coins in your estimation?

 

Again, I agree with all of that. Starting to worry that I am agreeing with you too much. It is good to spread the word and at least put the information out there. Unfortunately both of us know it will not change the fact that people are going to over spend (significant premimum) just for the attractive toning.

 

"Collecting" has never been the issue. "Promoting" is.

 

They are not "people", but "sheeple".

 

You basically called it a fad, I’m curious as to when you think the fad started?

 

Can’t say exactly. What I know is I see this particular fetish all over the place online, and only included with profuse apology in meatspace. I used to deal EXCLUSIVELY in meatspace, then only mostly so, then exclusively again. For present purposes, I am in the only “place” I ever see this fetishized practice.

 

Never at shows, even? I don't get to a lot of shows, and certainly not large ones, but our last state show (50-100 sellers) had at least one guy who was mainly focused on monster toners, and it seems like I saw quite a few at other tables.

 

It happened long before online. You see more of them now in auction because they hope people go crazy and get a big price instead of private sales.

That said though if as some say they can be made easily and get the top premiums, the market will be flooded and prices will drop and they will all be much more affordable which would make most people happy.

You know as well as I do anything that can be replicated for essentially free money will keep going and speeding up. If that happens so be it. If people don't care because like art they just care about the final product so be it.

 

Go to an ANA show. I virtually never see toners, aside from a random onesie twosie. One time, a dealer literally had an entire case of toners on his "side case" of a corner table. It was Dallas. He LITERALLY APOLOGIZED for having them there. He claimed they were all on consignment for a friend, because (and I quote) "they're just a big fad that is going out of favor again. It's all cyclical and it's over soon."

 

Rainbow toned coins have been promoted for decades, here is proof.

You repeatedly make the claim that rainbow toned coins and the premiums they generate based on superior eye appeal are cyclical. But you never show any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise to support such a claim.

I purchased this coin for $448.50 from a Heritage Auction on 4/28/2002



I sold the same coin for $529 on E-Bay on 11/26/2012




That is a 10 year span where this coin maintained it's value based on it's toning premium. During the 10 years in between when I purchased it and when I sold it, I collected rainbow toned coins and never during that time period did the rainbow toned market crash. In other words, there was no cycle, there was no fad, there was no fetish, just a stable market with normal fluctuations. Additionally, I have continued to collect rainbow toned coins since 2012 and never in the last 6 years has the rainbow toned market crashed.

So my question for you is, now that I have shown (anecdotally) that the rainbow toned coin market has been stable for at least 15 years, how long does that stability need to exist before you stop calling it a fad/fetish?

 

Are you TRYING to get me convinced you are THE biggest fool in history, or what? It's clear why you need to pump up this garbage - to get out from under it.

Look, I've heard Bob Campbell try to pump up this garbage as long ago as 1994 or 1997, can't remember which. But the drumbeat has gotten ridiculous.

Look. at ANA shows we have meetings for CONECA and EAC and TAM and all kinds of alphabet soup, even a featured VAMmer meeting. But no toner guys. Why? It. Is. Not. Mainstream. It. Is. A. Fad.

Toning. Is. Damage.

It's obvious to me you don't hear much pushback from mainstream collectors. As long as I draw breath, that is OVER.