Inducing toning on ASE's

I didn't suggest that you DO use safe storage methods.

You're on the right track so think for a minute. Collectors in the old days didn't utilize safe storage methods, they didn't even know there were such things. They put their coins in envelopes or albums or folders and simply put them away someplace, maybe in a box (cardboard or wood) and on the closet shelf or even a safe at home. Maybe even in a bank but back then it was unlikely. After that, toning or lack of it was simply left to chance. And that chance was determined by the variables involved.

And don't forget, you can take 2 identical coins, or 3 or a dozen, and do what the others who have posted their results above have done, storing the coins side by side. And they may turn out to be similar to each other or completely different from each other because each coin by itself is also a variable.

The spectacular toning that we all know and love is almost always an accident - it happened by pure chance in other words.