Natural or man made?

With all the interesting opinions I really would like to see what a TPG has to say about this. I know that if it was my coin and I had it in my possession for a long time I would send it in to be graded to clarify this before I'd sell it.

 

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If you didn't intend it to tone, then it's NT. If you did intend it to tone, then it's AT. If you didn't even think about it, then it's QT.

 

Would they grade one of those if one of us submitted it? There's the question.

 

Extremely brilliant question/observation at that! And I have long believed, rightly or wrongly, that who you are matters more at PCGS than anywhere else. There are "favored submitters" and then there's everybody else. Just a feeling I get whenever I'm around PCGS staff.

 

I hear ya, Kurt.

 

I am generally quite skeptical of colorfully toned rainbow nickels, especially when they have the vibrant colors that these do. I know that it happens, but they just don't look right to me. I usually associate a more pastel schema with toned nickel. I would like to see these in hand to get a better feel for them.

 

All of this is why we need to abandon NT/AT and go with MA/QC. At least that's calling it like it is...

 

Ah yes, slabbing - the gift that keeps on giving, ... to the slabbers. It's not enough to pay once, you need to pay over and over again. Neat business model, huh? And just for giggles, SOMETIMES the very same TPGS who straight graded a coin last time will now change their mind! What a neat business!

There are literally coins in my collection longer than the oldest slabbing company is old. I wonder how many times their grades have changed.

Yeah, I know, is this era of flippers, turners and churners, and everybody's a vest pocket dealer, I'm the dinosaur. I happen to live around tons and tons of dinosaurs. My "coin dealer" of choice is the undertaker. I buy dead guys' coins, and some day, when I assume room temperature, some other dinosaur can buy mine.

 

What is MA/QC?

 

Market(ing?) acceptable / Questionable color.

Keep in mind, when it comes to demand in coins, marketING is king. AKA, pump and dump.

 

I've heard them discussed lots, but I've never had the "pleasure?" of seeing one. What did the so-called "body bags" look like?

 

I'll just add that many of the TPGS terms came about due to the advice of attorneys. I call them "weasel terms." For example, Questionable Authenticity (QA) is just BS. Call the coin altered or counterfeit, be done with it and be prepared to defend your opinion.

If you look at enough slabs, the meanings of the words with regard to the way TPGS use them becomes apparent.

As to the rainbow nickels. I'll bet that sometime in the future they will be discovered to be "enhanced." That is another "weasel" term - from my keyboard. The reason I believe this is decades ago, a large number of Commemorative half dollars hit the market with a "micro-chunky" and splotchy brown-blue rose-green tone. The coins were very attractive, were certified, and commanded a premium. After a while, they were found to be doctored! So we'll just need to wait a while and see the fate of these nickels.

Unfortunately, on occasion when the major TPGS's make a big error it is made acceptable. Now for example, the Micro "O" counterfeits are being slabbed right along with genuine coins. Today, no matter how it happened, these nickels are also MA. I don't see that ever changing even if they are proven to be "altered."

 

This makes me think of the old PCGS board. That was over 15 years ago. Someone would post one of these with wild color and the fight was on. No one could agree between AT or NT. Some things never change.

 

Kurt-

As it happens I found one scarfing up slabs to photo...



Basically the coin was returned in a flip with the label and the whole is in a bag with the big card. Not sure if the bag is original

Enjoy

 

There have been several types of what folks call body bags. Some of the early ones came back in a flip with DNG wrote on a sticker. Later they stuck a card in the flip and checked the reason it did not grade. I guess now you actually get a label with the reason.

 

If you placed a coin into a manila envelope for 40 years, there's a chance the coin might come out black/brown, there's a chance the coin might have no surface changes (depending upon the quality of paper and the storage environment, there's even a chance you get rainbow toning, and of course, anything in between.

The result of the experiment is that in 40 years, you don't know what you'll have (in terms of how the coin looks), and you didn't attempt to accelerate the toning process, so it would be likely accepted as NT... though who knows what the market will consider "acceptable" 40 years from now.

The "AT" aspect of such an experiment is when an individual then places said manila envelope into a higher heat/humidity environment and regularly check the "progress" of the toning on the coin. In that case, I'd say the intent was clearly to accelerate the rate of toning, though the market may still find the end result favorable.

What I want to know is how many "resets" can a coin go through before the peaks get too short to have nice diffraction patterns?

 

If by "reset" you are posting about the cycle of toned, dipped (reset); toned; dipped...this is a highly inflammatory subject!

Actual experiments have been done on fresh original BU 90% silver quarters in a late 1970's grading seminar. I can say for a fact (I was there) that no changes were observed using a stereo microscope at 10X after almost a dozen PROPER DIPS.

In hindsight there was a problem with that experiment. We did not look at the coin using an electron microscope or even the greater than 100X the scope was capable of.

There is a bigger problem with that experiment. The surface of the coin had never been allowed to deteriorate by toning. It should be obvious that if the surface of a very darkly toned coin is "etched" beyond repair by one dip; the surface of a lightly toned coin that is dipped and then allowed to tone and dipped again over and over SHOULD be visibly affected after only a few cycles.

This experiment should be done BUT I'm not interested as there may be a difference in the result (at the atomic level resulting in different surfaces) if the toning is left to occur naturally over a few years or it is artificially accelerated.