Hi all Found this today and thought it was pretty cool toning! I like the radial on the back, which I dont see often on these! What do you think?
it's 135 years old. even if it sat untouched for the past 30+ years a lot could happen to it in the previous 100.
I would say it was cleaned with an ammonia based product before it was put in the book 30 years ago when it was 100 years old.
I love the look of the coin. Glad people know what happened to it years ago, I guess they were there.
It looks like it was polished before it went into the album. If it went into the book 30 years ago, that means there were a hundred years before that where people could have messed with it.
Collectors can enjoy coins for years, decades, that they are not going to sell. If people are saying this was cleaned, it's not a sign of disrespect, it's just an honest objective opinion. Sent for grading the coin prob comes back QC as previously stated. So many old copper and silver coins were cleaned routinely 100 years ago, that's just life.
When you see a copper coin with this much wear and color like this, you can bet it was messed with. The coin should be brown. You can find AU and uncirculated coins with nice color but not the colors this coin shows.
There are many battles that you can find in the Archives of CT. Probably keep you reading for about a day, on this very subject of Artificial Toning and Natural Toning. There are patterns that are made under normal circumstances that your coin does not poses. I would look up some of these discussions. They will surely help you learn to spot a nicely toned coin compared to an altered coin. Here is one that I put away about a year ago. A little less extreme than yours, but still fits into the altered category. This coin probably had something spilt on it to produce its pattern. It is much more colorful than I am presenting it, but I thought that surface conditions meant more to this subject than color.
Thank you all for the replies! I certainly didn’t take offense to the first post, I am here to learn. I thought the poster meant “recent” artificial toning. Who knows what happened to this coin before we owned it. My grandpa wasn’t a coin collector and this was just something that was a thing for he and I to do together. It was more about filling the album holes as cheaply as possible vs trying to find mint examples so we weren’t on the look got cleaned or tampered coins. Jut dates and low $ signs
And props to op for holding the coin with his fingers to take the picture. Otherwise we might've actually seen the whole coin.
