Hello so this penny looks like it's brown on the reverse and red brown on the adverse. From my understanding most Pennies are brown from circulation environmental and so on and so forth. So does that mean that the reverse was sitting in some kind of dirt or whatever but the adverse stayed clean?thank you
It may have just been on a piece of paper, in a wood desk drawer, paper coin roll, almost anything with heat, sunlight, or dampness. Even though the word toning sounds better, it is just an attractive form of corrosion, Some people like toning , other try to keep their cents as they came from the mint. Some people like to chemically change them from one state to another. Toning easily occurs on uncirculated coins, but unless there are other significant features of the coin, there should not be any added value to a coin. There are a lot of threads in the forums. Jim
I'd guess that was the last or END coin in the Original bank roll. Lots of fingerprint oil and oxidation.