I was interested to see that Artificial Toning will cause PCGS to body bag a coin into a Genuine slab It makes me wonder why anyone would mess with attempting an AT on a valuable coin? Unless it's only done on coins that have been cleaned and would already be in a body bag state. These two coins (below) are interesting. One was body bagged as AT. The other had such wild colors I would have guessed AT, but PCGS graded it PF64. I am not sure I would have recognized either one of these on my own. Certainly when anyone buys toned coins that are not TPG, care needs to be taken.
The answer to why is money. People do it because they believe it will allow them to sell the coin for more money than they could have otherwise. As for the TPG's - you have to realize that TPG attitudes on color have changed several times over the years. Just because a coin is in a regular slab that does not mean that the coin is NT. It merely means that at the time that the coin was slabbed the TPG considered that particular toning to be market acceptable. You could take that same coin, crack it out, and submit it a year or two late and have it placed in a Genuine holder because at that particular time that toning was not market acceptable. The issue over toning and TPGs is just as bad as the issue over grading and TPGs. The TPGs are constantly proving that they change their standards on toning all the time. Read any forum to see this. And yet people refuse to believe that the same thing applies to grading. I mean open your eyes people - the evidence is right there in front of you. All you have to do is see it.
Money.....but in the examples you posted...the coin on the right will not look like that in hand. The imager used difussed lighting and then heavily contrasted the image to make the color pop since it's a proof. It wouldn't look quite that wild to a grader in hand so that would tend to throw folks off that don't take images of toned coins themselves.
GD and everyone ... thanks for alerting me to the CHANGING RULES of the TPGs ... ugh ... i had no idea (it sort of makes me want to take up another hobby ... not that i would ... but $*#&$ )
Indeed. People juice photos all the time and not just on toners. I can make any coin look completely different with just lighting and camera angle alone....it's not very hard. And with the prevalence of image editing software anyone can do it in a few minutes if they don't have a camera/lighting skills.
Agreed...I feel sorry for those that struggle with imaging or who don't take their own photo's.....having the knowledge of what coins look like under certain lighting conditions and angles can save you lots of money and or make you lots of money when buying coins in the case of real bad images like scans
