Last summer I was at my LCS and saw this Barber Half in one of the junk silver trays for the princely sum of twenty times face value: The 1896-O Barber Half Dollar is almost a semi-key, but not quite. At this level of sharpness with original surfaces, it would be an $80-100 coin. Unfortunately, it being cleaned bright white resulted in this coin being doomed to junk silver. I tried selling it on Ebay for something like $28 OBO, and it didn’t go. A few months ago I decided to try something on it. I had some spare dark yellow coin envelopes laying around, and know that coins can tone in them because of the sulfur in the paper. Put this coin in an envelope and left it on the windowsill for most of the past three months, and briefly put it in my wardrobe under a pile of folded shirts as well. This is the result: Although still a “cleaned” coin it does look quite a bit better than it did before. Would certainly look much better in a Barber Half album or collection. Might leave it for a little longer but very happy with how it turned out.
