How to Tone Coins

I got 63 money for it in a 62 holder and bidding was strong.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Yes you can grade to within less than a point if the pics are good , a lot of us learned to grade Lincolns from @rlm's cents GTGs he put on for many years , often getting within .400 or lower on average for 2 coins twice a week . But he gave us good pics every coin . Most peoples pics aren't good enough whether from lack of skill or equipment .
Even the pics in the grade by pics books aren't good enough to grade a coin or teach a person to grade especially in series that were weakly struck as the pics can't or won't show enough variances in strike . They'll get one close but seldom on the money . The written word in conjunction with the coin in hand is always the best way .

 

You're just trying to ramp up my sympathies so I send you a genuine Lancaster County homemade Whoopie Pie. I know your type. Of course, they don't ship well, outside of a very large and very thick NGC slab.

 

I've seen fairly amazing iPhone pictures and the amount of progress one can make in a couple of days with good feedback. That makes me think that equipment and skill aren't as important as effort and willingness to read and experiment. Of course, effort plus skill and equipment will get you to a level where you can take a sharp photo of a mint mark that takes up my entire screen, or an entire side of a coin that takes up about 4 screens (warning, don't click the pic on a slow connection!).

 

But I did not say you said none. However, to pick one that I can get the figures on, look at Indian cents. PCGS has graded 15,927 red. Now that figure is probably high (for PCGS) considering the reslabs, but use it anyway. A quick check shows NGC with about half as many. So including all, say there are only 30,000 red Indians left. That is .00016 of the total production. I find that figure entirely plausible. I fail to see why that is impossible. It only takes a few rolls in each state.

As for large cents, PCGS has 722 red braided hair cents, and 45 coronet head cents.

 

99.8% NO and not by any of us. But you knew I would disagree with you, right?

.2% YES as I have watched it done using electrolysis on one occasion by a jeweler/chemist (using 3 different chemical baths) who "restored" a red-brown Uncirculated Indian cent to Mint red after one unsuccessful attempt. The first time I told him the color was "off." Then he fixed it. I could tell what one of the "baths" was by its "blue" color.

Now, we ALL know that many coins slabbed as "red" are not truly original so perhaps the "coin doctors" have gotten better or the TPGS are getting lax.

 

Contemplate the process by which a Red Lincoln turns Brown. In many cases, oxygen is the only added ingredient....

 

Contemplate? Contemplate what? Are you asking me to catch the "crazy train to What-If-Town again?" We wish to turn a red-brown cent to a "passible red." This is the stuff that makes me fuss with you ! IMO, another nothing post!

PLEASE say what you mean. Sounds like you imply to know a way to put a red-brown cent into a vacuum chamber for a while to draw out the oxygen and turn it red again. Have you done some experimentation? Do you wish to share it in a PM? I promise not to tell BUT I WILL be sure to test your response.

 

Somebody a lot smarter than I preferred to teach people to fish, rather than give them a fish. Everything I'm alluding to around here is already available on the Internet, if you know where and how to look. Exercise your own brain, not mine.

 

This would've been a good April Fools Day joke... two days from now.

That said, the info sounds accurate, at least with the sulfur part.

But I like NT not AT and I can tell the difference.

 

Thanks and No thanks...Not interested in theory or anything else especially from someone who "alludes" (...as in never experimentally tried) to just about everything (except photography). Just happy to/want to know how to tell acceptable/not acceptable color on "red" copper.

BTW...If I WERE interested in "Doctoring/Restoring" a red-brown coin to mint red I SHOULD HAVE ALREADY LEARNED the technique LONG BEFORE the Internet was universally available for people to "learn how to fish", post their dreams or uninformed, "pulled out of a hat" opinions/misinformation.

As I ALREADY wrote: Somebody was doing it in the 1970's and he was not a chemist so it is a good chance many others were also - just not me. I was working on the "stripped red to mint brown" side of the reaction back then.

PS Full confession: Now you have gotten me interested in brown to red!

 

Then you're not my target audience. I wish to address people who want to learn how to learn, not those merely interested in picking my brain for what I've personally committed to memory (which ain't very much) or experienced (which is probably a bit more than you're giving credit for). I am sick and tired of being a public numismatic Let Me Google That For You Search Bar, and uninterested in spoonfeeding those too lazy to do for themselves. If you know how to find it for yourself, I and my experience become completely superfluous.

 

Besides, if we can't be prickly old cantankerous guys, what good is surpassing 60 years, anyway? We earned it. I don't know about anyone else, but I had to put up with cranky old guys my whole life, and now I are one, and if the young'ns don't like it, they can just wait - their turn comes eventually.

My own recipe includes Diet Coke and Mentos. Wait, that's something else.

 

That's OK. You are in my sights . Besides, it is much quicker (so I prefer) to be "spoon-fed."

Not True! You and your EXPERIENCES are something we all need when they cannot be refuted due to your actual, personal experimentation.

 

Two words fer ya': Time Machine. Ya' heard it here first.

 

Oh my, @Insider, haven't you heard that coin people are immune from the rigors of the scientific method? We don't publish our results so others can test them and confirm or refute them; we assert stuff and then go pour ourselves a cognac and grab a carefully conserved pre-revolution Cuban Romeo y Julieta cigar and kick back. It's our style.

In all seriousness though, if everybody went all transparent on what they/we know or have found that works to alter coin colors (both ways) the whole toning and red premiums system would collapse, and who needs that albatross hanging around getting in the way?

 

Of course, then again, there is this:

http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/demos/main_pages/9.9.html

It's a gas, ain't it?

 

OK, how about this?

I'm guessing the anode was the IHC, the cathode was a sacrificial Red Cent, and the electrolyte was copper(II) sulfate. The IHC probably lost a bit of mass during the process, but not enough to matter. The fact that IHC's are an alloy probably lead to variable results.

Activated carbon might be useful as an alternative, with the right technique. I dunno; I've no experience....

 

Thanks

Your post was fast and tasty!

I knew reduction was the process. Nevertheless, until I see it actually done in a lab I think the color after the experiment will be "off." Big difference heating up a nice piece of copper and a hundred year coin with its impurities. It is going to take me awhile to get to a college chemistry lab and prove/disprove my opinion as I don't have any hydrogen gas here and don't plan to make any .

Until I do: I just put a micro torch to THE REVERSE of a 1958 cent and heated it until it glowed pink. Then I quenched it in water. Photos coming later.

Left: Reverse of another cent that matched the "torched" coin's original brown color.
Right: Torched coin's altered color. Became much lighter (now looks cleaned) w/touch of golden blue-green rim toning).

Obverse of torched coin that was face down on a stainless steel hotplate. Now center reddish color with AT bluish field color.

No Hydrogen available to really perform experiment BUT the coin did not turn "Black" as the link suggested. Theory is good though, right? Sometimes the actual chemical equation does not match the result!

@Kentucky, care to run an experiment in your class for us?