Natural vs. artificial toning

I recently sent a number of silver commemoratives to PCGS. Most of them came back details/artificially colored. I know for a fact that all of the coins were put into an album 35-40 years ago and toned naturally over that time. Many are very attractive.

My question is, what experience do others have with the TPGs calling natural toning artificial and vice versa?

 

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Graders have no idea where the coins were stored. If they look even somewhat questionable to them then they’re better off calling something QC/AT. They have a reputation to maintain. Can’t be risking it with questionable coins.

 

Post some photos of the coins.

 

It's just a game they invented and like to play with our coins and should never be taken seriously. If you like the toning, you like it; if you don't, you don't. That's all they're saying, but in these hyped-up acronyms and over-intellectualized way...

 

Alas, I hadn't photographed the coins. May do that when I get them back, but their toning is not the same. Mostly it's peripheral and some are pretty colorful. A couple were toned but not attractively so.

 

PCGS has been nuking all pretty toned coins for about a month and a half now. Whereas they slabbed almost every toned coin earlier this year.

 

They're the professionals, it's the only thing they're talented at, so it must be assumed they know what they're doing...

 

To paraphrase the old saying: 'Buy the coin, not the toning' - some may see toning as an enhancement, others may consider it an alteration - submitters and TPGs will disagree...

 

Can you qualify this statement a little. Is this based on anecdotal evidence from your personal submissions?, complaints from another coin forum?

 

For at least 5 years both major TPGs have straight graded many egregiously AT coins. If you go to any major coin show you'll see buckets of them that leave you scratching your head as to why they got slabbed.

 

I send a submission in about every 2 weeks. Have all year long. And I notice when things change, personally. There are times when they tighten up grading, then loosen up. Earlier this year, whenever I sent a rainbow toned coin for grading, they would grade it. But over the last 6 to 8 weeks, I've gotten a few "questionable color" designations on naturally toned coins. IMO, the graders periodically meet and discuss, and if one or two of them say, "hey, we've been getting some wacky colored coins in lately," they mutually agree to crack down on them. But maybe that's just the conspiracy theory side of me....

 

Can you show us these QT coins before we just accept that PCGS has changed their grading criteria? Showing some of the ones that graded earlier in the year might also help.

 

Most of the complaints I’ve seen have dealt with submissions with an unusually high number of toners that have similar looks.

 

I spent some time finding the 3 they recently nuked for me. The Trade Dollar was in an old PCI holder. The Bust Half still is in the PCI holder, but they told me "questionable color" even though anyone with a brain knows PCI holders tone coins in this exact way... The Peace Dollar came out of an old Whitman Album. As far as the ones they gave a pass to earlier this year, you can check those out for yourself in the Post a Toned Coin thread. I posted a dozen or so in there myself this year.

 

You still got that peace dollar?

 

No. But the other 2 are going to the FUN show with me. Gonna talk to NGC's Mark Salzberg about them. I'll keep you posted.

 

The toning on the trade dollar looks like pretty run of the mill secondary toning and I don't know what they saw that caused the problem, but you can't be seriously surprised about the other two coins. The CBH looks extremely hinky, and the Peace Dollar is, well, a peace dollar. Had you showed me the obverse of that Peace Dollar without the reverse, I would have said the toning looks perfectly natural. But once you add a completely untoned reverse to a coin that has extensive album toning on the obverse, the question immediately becomes, "how the heck did that happen?"

The point here is that it is dangerous to assume that anecdotal evidence supports a change in grading standards because of the very small sample size. Furthermore, you are submitting coins that are under constant scrutiny for artificial toning.

 

You can argue all you want. All I did was share my experience. The bust half is not fake toning. The Peace dollar.... I may buy that it's not natural, but only because it's a peace dollar. The color progressions are natural.

 

I'm not arguing with you, merely stating that your anecdotal experiences aren't sufficient to make the claim that PCGS has made a policy change regarding toned coins.