Featured Can you define artificial toning ?

Good wine grapes make horrible eating. And good table grapes make horrible wine. Nice try, though. Points for creativity.

 

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V. Kurt Bellman pointed to the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I wondered when someone would. All toning is actually corrosion and thus damage to the coin. You may think it's pretty damage, but it's still damage.

Should you intentionally damage your coins for the purpose of short-term profit?

 

Answer: to MANY people on this forum, short-term profit trumps any and all other considerations. We call these people "dealers". Can you say "dealers"? Very good.

This is why I have an "attitude problem" about dealers. Yes, in some cases, they ARE a necessary evil. But they also warp the hobby in many ways. Selling toning as a pure good is one prime way.

 

So you're advocating AP (artificial preservation)?

 

CAREFUL preservation. Artificial preservation is ALSO "doctoring", every bit as much as inducing toning is. The ideal goal should be obvious. "Do no harm". It's analogous to the old Eastman Kodak slogan - Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures. We have a solemn obligation to future generations to do all in our power to affect NOTHING on our coins.

 

No but I know several people that could.

 

Yes it is!!

 

I should have said "artificial conservation". AC. Taking a coin out of its natural environment and putting it in an airtite!!! Good god man what are you doing!!!!????

 

That's being a responsible steward of an objet d'art that belongs to history, and it deserves a well-earned salute, complete with heel clicks. Of course, if your idea of numismatics is "turning a quick buck", we ALREADY have no commonality on which to base a civil discussion.

 

So, like, doesn't EVERYBODY have a vacuum chamber bell housing and bottles of gas and lab plumbing? I do, just to understand the processes; while many toner dealers have one to create "inventory". Here's the one I bought, but there are others.

https://www.amazon.com/Pyrex-Vacuum-Chamber-CFM-Pump/dp/B014RG5S54/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1542223312&sr=8-6&keywords=vacuum chamber glass

Oh yeah, I ALSO bought it so I can't be BS'ed by "toner dealers".

If that's too rich for your blood, get some thiourea, some citric acid, some baking soda, a few cheap silver coins, and a Saturday afternoon. Then play around. In NO time, you'll be able to turn a shiny 1962 dime into a brown splotchy monstrosity that people will pay obscene sums for.

 

Ah, Amazon. You really are doing your inhuman corporate best to make me accumulate more stuff...

 

I am NOT corporate. I bees da gummint!

 

And I'd award you points for the rebuttal as well, if you hadn't already stated your opinion that good Morgan dollars make horrible collecting...

 

Won't buy coins off internet. Buys miniature gas chamber to kill coins off internet.

 

That was addressed (rhetorically) to Amazon, not you. You were just serving as an uncompensated marketing associate.

 

"Good" Morgan dollars make fine collecting. I object to the mundane everyday dreck in most collections. All good Morgans are good. All Morgans are not.

 

Now, I don't think anybody here has ever claimed that you have to inspect vacuum pumps in-hand to find the proper specimen...

 

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than debunking a scam, almost ANY scam. I do work for the Consumer Affairs Committee Chairman, after all, for at least another month. After the new year, we'll see.

This hobby is up to its eyeballs in scams, by the way.

 

I was under the impression, from various comments on this site, it was caused by the sulfer in the paperboard used to make the albums and that was why toning started around the rims and traveled toward the center of the coin. I just assumed that the slides trapped air on the coins that eventually concentrated the sulfer off-gassing from the paperboard. So do I have it all wrong?

 

Ohhhh, THAT'S what I'm doing wrong then. How about a turnip? Rutabaga perhaps?