View attachment 332624 I see a lot of American Silver Eagles with Gold toning. Is this natural toning or is it induced?
1988-1997 West Point planchet washing did produce some odd toned coins. But this one???? If I had just opened a sealed roll and seen this I would have the same question .
Suggestion: take of photo of this coin next to a clean blast white ASE for comparison, then re-post it for us. Sometimes the lighting in photographs can make the coin look yellow to begin with, so its hard to tell.
Here, I removed the warm cast from image, assuming the background should be light gray / white. Toning looks fine to me, not really too extravagant to scream AT.
I would be suspicious of this listing for the sheer reason that seller juiced the color to make it a stronger gold. Also, nice of geekpryde to have balanced the color but, given how blue the cast shadow still is, I'm guessing the coin's left field (which looks blue) is blast white and the "gold" on the right is very pale.
The first one in the original post is natural and the 1988 is also natural. It is VERY hard to find a 1988 toned. I nearly completed an entire toned set and never did find a toned 1988. But after I sold the set I found one and still have it. PCI toned eagles are notorious for having that toning. Usually develops into very vivid colors. Remember that silver eagles are .999 so vivid sometimes crazy toning occurs.
Fact - ASE's can tone like that naturally, and look exactly like both of the coins posted in this thread. Fact - ASE's can be toned artificially to look exactly like both of the coins in this thread. Fact - neither, you, me, or anybody else, can ever say definitively which one it is - NT or AT.
Yeah, it's a tough call as to definitively knowing which type of toning has occured. I lean towards NT, but who am I to tell you that? lol
Impossible to say for sure whether the toning is natural or not. It could be natural... depends on if you believe in "innocent until proven guilty" or vice-versa when it comes to toning lol... Personally the fact that it's almost impossible to tell whether toning is natural or not (sometimes the very definition of "natural" is arguable, as you can put a coin in a very specific environment to make it "naturally" tone) unless it's extremely blatant, is why I tend to avoid toned coins in the first place. (That and I just don't like the look of them lol, but that part's subjective. To me all toning may as well be artificial, in the sense that it's not how the coin was intended to look. If you like crazy colors on your coins, plenty of mints in the world put them on their coins on purpose.)
What would be the incentive to create a modern silver bullion coin with some light gold peripheral toning via artificial methods?
Notice in this photo the white is not really white? I bet the seller is using fluorescent lights for the image and does not have the camera set for fluorescent lights.