They did a good job removing the carbon spots but do the after photos seem kind of lusterless to you? Though there may be a difference in how they photographed the after photos. Link to article Before: After:
Yes it does look like the luster is diminished. But based on the before pics it was probably necessary to remove whatever was on the coin. Those weren't carbon spots - something was on the coin.
Can gold be cross contaminated by another metal ? Let's say, if it were in an iron box, could it pick up iron oxide ?
Any time a coin is "worked" on there will be a loss of luster. The real question is why is NCS ( NGC ) allowed to work on coins but it if thought of a huge problem if any dealer/collector does it. Think about that for a while. Talk about cornering the market.
I agree on that. The coin looked more original and desirable to me before, now it has the dreaded dead look.
In truth collectors and coin dealers work on far more coins than NCS could even think about working on. And the only ones that are a problem at all are those that are worked on by collectors who do not know what they are doing. You never hear a word about all the millions of coins that have been worked on by collectors and or coin dealers that did know what they were doing. Why ? Because you can't tell that the coins were worked on - except by use of deductive reasoning.
Carbon spots are possible on early gold aren't they? I have seen a few toned gold pieces due to a poor mix of copper.
Well, they aren't carbon spots per se - they are copper spots. Some may say semantics, but I don't. Carbon spots typically appear on copper coinage, sometimes silver, and are quite dark, black even. Copper spots are more reddish or brown in color and typically only appear on gold coinage. As I said earlier, I don't think the spots on this coin are the result of either. I think the spots on this coin are the result of the coin being contaminated with some liquid at some time in the past. The removal of this residue accounts for the lack of luster IMO.
They do do a very nice job IMHO, and those spots were too distracting before IMHO. I think they are doing a good thing for the numismatic community. Unfortunate though that it looks like Jack said "dead", but what can you really do? Better I guess like that than for those spots to cause more damage IMHO. But, I could be just way off and totally wrong with all this, but that's my opinion on the matter. Phoenix
Hmm, well I would definitely say the coin in the "after" picture has less luster, but I woud'nt go far as to say it has none. I wouldn't mind owning this coin to be honest... though I'd expect to pay a little less than a coin with more luster to it of course. I'd still say what NCS did to the coin resulted in a net improvement to the coin's condition and value. Lsoing a little bit of the luster for the sake of getting rid of those spots seems a reasonable trade-off to me.
