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Message:: [QUOTE="SuperDave, post: 2435522, member: 1892"]In some cases I could "buy" this as original toning, but not this one. The reason is, I see crud(?) clinging to the tighter areas inside date and lettering, where a mechanical cleaning process wasn't able to reach it. After that cleaning(?), an artificial toning process was employed to hide the evidence of the cleaning. Now, the reason I used question marks after the word "cleaning" is this could also be the result of overdipping a terminally-toned coin, as Lehigh96 mentions. Seated coinage is noted for very dark toning, and I'd expect the worst (least-removable) of that toning to be in the tightest areas. So another theory is that the coin doctor dipped the coin enough to destroy the luster, yet those worst spots still weren't removed. Although Lehigh96's comments on overexposure and saturation stand, the unsubtle nature of the toning pattern is a reasonable expectation of toning artificially applied to surfaces which lack the microscopic irregularities normally contributing to the subtle "holographic" thin-film interference pattern we expect of natural toning on a coin as lightly-circulated (possibly Mint State) as this one. It's toned more like a circulated coin than a Mint State coin.[/QUOTE]