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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 2227538, member: 112&quot;]First of all you have to put things into the proper perspective. Coin slabs, even the earliest, have only been around since the &#039;70s. PCGS and NGC since &#039;86 and &#039;87 respectively. So for the most part less than 30 years. </p><p><br /></p><p>But the coins, the coins have been around for a 100 to 200 years, and compared to that the lifetime of slabs is nothing. Dipping coins has been around, and a common practice, since the 19th century. So any given older coin could easily have been dipped at least once, and possibly several times, before it ever saw the inside of a slab. So again, the age of the slab means nothing.</p><p><br /></p><p>And you also have to realize that slabs, even when properly stored, do not stop toning, they merely slow it down. There are many coins, and I mean many, that have been removed from slabs, dipped, and then slabbed again. And then toned again. And that&#039;s just in the last 30 years.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is why, among what I shall call &quot;advanced collectors&quot; many of them highly prize the coins with what they call original skin. And that&#039;s because original skin can indicate that the coin has never been messed with, never dipped if you will. And that is because toning, in and of itself, slows down additional toning and to a certain degree protects a coin. But it only does this when a coin has also been properly stored. And that&#039;s kind of the kicker because the vast majority of collectors do not properly store their coins. So in most cases toning progresses at a faster rate eventually getting to the point where the coin &quot;needs&quot; to be dipped just to protect the coin from the ravages of toning itself.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now can original skin be definitively identified or recognized ? No it cannot, and the reason it cannot is because there is no difference between the toning that occurs at the beginning of a coins life, and toning that occurs 50 or 100 years later. The toning could have occurred at any time during the course of a coin&#039;s life. The coin could have been dipped twice previously, and then still very easily toned again. And this is because when a coin is dipped, it loses that bit of protection afforded by the toning that was removed and thus it tones at a much faster rate than it was toning at before. Freshly minted, and freshly dipped coins tone faster, much faster than coins with some degree of toning already on them.</p><p><br /></p><p>So toning is a very complicated issue, and one that not a whole lot of people really fully understand. And what they often think to be true, very often the opposite is true.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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