The Late Great Toned Coin Lie

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by V. Kurt Bellman, Jul 2, 2018.

  1. V. Kurt Bellman

    V. Kurt Bellman Yes, I'm blunt! Get over your "feeeeelings".

    Well, the big bags of 1,000 each Morgan dollar hoard coins have been opened and photographed. Lots of color, right? Wrong. Overwhelmingly blast white. The photo is a bag of 1880-S examples. They’ve been in sewn canvas bags for 138 years, and have not been dipped. Anyone want to revise their wives’ tales about white coins yet? “At that age, anything white has to have been dipped.” Yeah, right.

    541FF127-B6E3-487D-B462-5C1647DE9A6A.jpeg
     
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  3. Yankee42

    Yankee42 Well-Known Member

    Less than 100 out of 16,000 were toned, and not a rare date in the bunch.
     
  4. C-B-D

    C-B-D Well-Known Member

    Where were they found? Dry climate?
     
  5. Yankee42

    Yankee42 Well-Known Member

    Stashed away in a bank vault. The person supposedly did not want to pay the safe deposit fees any longer.
     
  6. Michael K

    Michael K Well-Known Member

    Was it temperature/ humidity controlled?
    When they printed the list of dates, there weren't any good dates.
    They claimed they were having them all graded, and I didn't see the
    point in paying double the money for the same grade common coin, just because this one says "Hoard" on the label.
    (I get that price from the value estimate of the hoard, which was way over valued. If I recall the estimate was approx. $90-$100 a coin and most price lists have them all in that condition for $50.)
     
  7. C-B-D

    C-B-D Well-Known Member

    Some of those in the pic look PL and some look like MS61 trash.
     
    Randy Abercrombie likes this.
  8. Randy Abercrombie

    Randy Abercrombie Supporter! Supporter

    Thus my love of blast white specimens is now founded. Thank you for this.
     
  9. Maxfli

    Maxfli Well-Known Member

    I guess I missed this story. Somebody have a link?
     
  10. calcol

    calcol Supporter! Supporter

    green18 likes this.
  11. green18

    green18 Unknown member Sweet on Commemorative Coins Supporter

    Thanks Cal..........

    [aside, and out hearing range] I suppose NY banks must have climate control in the vaults.
     
  12. Maxfli

    Maxfli Well-Known Member

  13. Sunflower_Coins

    Sunflower_Coins Importer and Exporter

    But I read somewhere that, at that age, anything white has to be dipped. So your point is invalid.
     
  14. green18

    green18 Unknown member Sweet on Commemorative Coins Supporter

    Ya always believe everything ya read in the internet?
     
  15. Sunflower_Coins

    Sunflower_Coins Importer and Exporter

    Hey, I'm still young and impressionable.
     
    green18 likes this.
  16. green18

    green18 Unknown member Sweet on Commemorative Coins Supporter

    Be more discerning, my friend........
     
    Stevearino likes this.
  17. Lehigh96

    Lehigh96 Toning Enthusiast

    Wow, so some bags of silver dollars were kept in climate controlled vaults and didn't develop rainbow toning. You've convinced me, the thousands of other sealed bags that yielded rainbow toners must all be AT, I will never buy a rainbow toner again.

    :rolleyes:
     
  18. V. Kurt Bellman

    V. Kurt Bellman Yes, I'm blunt! Get over your "feeeeelings".

    What I'm telling you is the supply :rolleyes:magically:rolleyes: expanded when they became popular. You are free to believe any myth your business model requires you to believe.
     
    markr and Dynoking like this.
  19. V. Kurt Bellman

    V. Kurt Bellman Yes, I'm blunt! Get over your "feeeeelings".

    From the CoinWeek story, quoting Jeff Garrett:

    “Our only disappointment was the relatively small number of attractively toned coins. There are probably less than 100 examples with rainbow toning. I would have thought that 50 years of sitting in cloth bags would have produced a much different result in that regard. Nearly all of the coins are frosty white in appearance.”

    His “disappointment” is identical to my “skepticism” of the whole rainbow toning story writ large. I believe it’s OBVIOUS that many on the market are artificial. Further, the whole “if it’s old and white, it was dipped” meme has been proven to be a bald faced lie.
     
  20. GDJMSP

    GDJMSP Numismatist Moderator

    Far from it. It is and always has been widely known that Morgan dollars are the exception to that rule for the very same reasons that you have posted in this thread. That being Morgan dollars are the one and only coin to have been sealed in bags and put away in large numbers until the mid 20th century, and sometimes later. So yes, it is and always has been quite common to find Morgan dollars that are blast white and yet have never been dipped. Now no less of an authority than Q. David Bowers has not only acknowledged and confirmed this, he has specifically written about it in his books.

    Ya see Kurt you're forgetting one thing, exceptions do not disprove the rule. And Morgan dollars are the exception to - old and white, it's been dipped.

    On this point -

    - we are in complete agreement. As are many others.
     
  21. Michael K

    Michael K Well-Known Member

    I think the numbers are consistent with what would happen if these bags of coins were kept in a temperature/ humidity controlled environment for 100 years.
    Some show toning (there is air and there are gases they have been exposed to, as well as whatever is coming off the bags they have been stored in). But most don't.
    Why would you expect the results to be different from that?
    I guess if someone wants a coin that hasn't been dipped, they can pay double the price for one of these NY Hoard slabbed common date Morgans.
     
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