I used to love typing in "toned" in to ebay, and spending time looking at coins. Never bought one, I just like looking. Well it seems that eBay has been inundated with artificially toned coins lately. What makes me sad, however, is that some really nice coins have been A/T. High grade bust halves for instance. Then there is the devious seller, who sells obviously A/T coins, without disclosure. So it's time for a poll.
Should they? No. Are they going to anyways? Yes. Is anything ever going to be done to stop it? No. The reason they sell in the first place is because a lot of people cannot tell the difference between NT and AT, so they see pretty colors and bid accordingly.
People can do whatever they want with their coins. Tone them, sell them, carve them, make magician coins, whatever. The only thing that ever bothered me was intentionally doing it for the purpose of deception to inexperienced buyers. I really don't see that many artificially toned coins on ebay. There aren't many sellers who do this. They are on my ban list, so I don't see them. Also, you really have to put some responsibility on the buyer. If they can't tell the difference between an AT coin, and an NT one, they shouldn't be buying toned coins in hopes of it being an amazing deal. What's next Tim? Ban sellers who sell cleaned coins and don't say they have been cleaned? So my answer to your poll is yes.
After I learned about A/T coins. I stopped buying them except find them still in cello mint set or graded by either three top tier graders. However, there are really nice A/T coins. I think it's OK as long the seller stated, "AT" as crystal clear.
Wait, I knew you could block bidders, but you can block sellers so they don't show up in search?!? Tell me how to do that. I have quite a few sellers I wanna add.
You can create custom searches and save them. When you create these searches, you can exclude sellers.
Artificial toning is an issue because there is a market for it. Get lucky and get an AT coin past a TPG and you can make a bundle. To some extent, toning and various types of hits and scratches all are ways in which a coin differs from the state in which it left the press. How about setting the scale so that toned coins are graded based on the extent of the toning. A coin that is completely covered in toning could not get higher than a MS60 grade, half of the surface - MS63, 10 % -MS65, and no toning at all allowed for higher grades. The artificial toning would probably drop off rapidly if toned coins could not achieve registry-level grades. For those who like toning, there could be special attribution fees for assessing toned coins akin to the variety attribution fees that exist now. FWIW, I actually like many toned coins - especially the purple cents and steel blue proof nickels
Actually, I love buying AT coins on the 'Bay. It saves me the work of doing it myself. Then, when it's time to sell, I take advice from the "most interesting man in the world": I don't normally sell AT coins... but when I do, I sell them on eBay.
