1883 N/C, AT or NT?

Hey guys, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m still lurking around here and am still heavily involved in the hobby. I’ve been working on my photography skills and was having issues with capturing color so I bought this piece to sharpen my skills. I’ve been curious though, is this natural or artificial? I’m leaning towards natural, but don’t really know. What say you and why? This is very accurate to the look of the coin in hand.
I’m having trouble uploading the reverse image, but I’ll get it in later. It’s not nearly as nice as the obverse though.

 

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Stby for many different opinions! This should be fun.

 

Don’t I know it, looking forward to being ripped up by the old school guys.

 

I know. It's all about opinion. Many will get down into the technical weeds.

Minus the coloring or toning, it's a nice looking coin with nice detail. Pictures aren't easy for me either, capturing the true appearance of a coin.

 

Definitely, absolutely, no question asked Artificial Toning. Everything about that screams fake.

Take a look here for what toned Liberty nickels should look like: https://coins.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&Ns=Time|1||Lot+No|0&Ne=304&N=790+231+51+349&Ntt=rainbow&ic4=SortBy-071515

 

I would lean strongly towards AT but I don’t trust your photos at all. It looks like you are using a diffused lighting technique on a mint state coin. Diffused lighting shows color but it completely destroys luster and gives a very cartoonish representation of the coin. Personally, I only ever use diffused lighting for proof coins, and then, only in conjunction with direct lighting photos.

Regarding the actual toning, the color progression is wrong and it has the appearance of oil slick toning, both strong indicators of AT. That said, I will reserve final judgement until I can see another set of photos.

 

This is the lighting that is built into my macro lens and it is diffused. This is pretty accurate to the appearance though. There’s not much luster to speak of really. I’ve seen others that have similar toning in PCGS and NGC slabs but have always questioned the straight grades. I do have a 1902 from my grandfathers collection that also looks similar. I can’t imagine that he did anything to the coin, but it sat in a manilla envelope for upwards of eighty years before I removed it to put in an album.

 

I just pulled a set of war nickels out of storage, housed in a cardboard holder. They've been in there a couple of decades and have some nice toning. But all the toning is around the edges, and looks entirely natural. I suppose the OP coin COULD be natural, but I highly doubt it, and wouldn't shell out much, if anything, for the toning. In fact, I've never been a fan of rainbow toning.

Steve

 

I’ll post some different images this weekend when my new lights get in. I don’t expect that anyone will change their minds, but at least you’ll get a better look. I bought it just as a means to gauge color for my camera and assumed that it was artificial, but it was cheap enough, so no loss anyway. My pickle is the pull away at the upper star, I’ve never seen pull away on an artificially toned coin. Are they even doing this now to fool people? I’m not much on toned pieces especially when I see what some of them go for.

BTW, for those of you who voted, brutal, just brutal. Glad to know CT hasn’t changed.

 

I’ll offer a small bit of a different take. One of the things that always delights me when I go to coin shows is the number of uncirculated V-nickels that I see displaying rainbow haloes. I am not a toned coin guy but did get sucked in by a slight purple toned V-nickel...... Whole thing I am getting at is that I have noticed that these nickels do seem to display different rainbow hues in mint state conditions....... Now the other side of me takes pause at the way yours is toned. I lean more toward natural toning when the toning is in agreement with the shape of the coin. So I do find it a bit odd that yours seems irregularly shaped. Though I am not condemning it.

 

I'm pretty sure that's not pull-away toning. Pull-away toning looks more like the device "casting a shadow" away from the center of the coin. The pattern around that top star looks more like a halo, and I see the same thing around the star just left of the date. Halos often indicate a coin that's been rubbed, leaving halos around the devices where the rubbing object couldn't make contact -- but I can't explain why the tight area between the top star and the wheat wouldn't have been even more protected.

 

I’m on the AT bandwagon now because of the comments of the previous posters that I have the utmost respect for, but it’s just not so cut and dry as it appears on its face. Thanks for your take.

 

Can you get us a photo using direct lighting? I’m not willing to give up on yet, I wanna see the luster profile in conjunction with the color even if you lose much of the impact of the color as a result.

 

I think the photos make it look more questionable. My vote was nt and the photos made it look wrong. I’ve seen graded liberty nickels that weren’t much different

 

I'm thinking AT all the way. Perhaps different pics/lighting would help determine more ?

 

My lighting sucks and makes everything look orange. That’s the reason that I used the lighting that’s built into my macro lens. I ordered some new ones that I’ll have this weekend.

 

You need whiter light than incandescent. I use 23wt 5000K CFL bulbs. Maybe we can’t get @rmpsrpms to help us with bulb selection for your camera.

 

It really doesn’t matter what type light is being used as long as the white balance in your camera is set for that type light.