Do you think this half cent's toning is the result of a long-ago cleaning? I haven't run across another one with this wild purple and gold, so I wonder. I just freed it from a 2x2. Sorry about my weird photos.
I'm going to have to agree with zane, it is a nice coin but copper just doesn't do that in that particular way all too often.
I'll also agree with zane. I would say that the reverse was cleaned-it just has those characteristics.
Thanks for your help. She looks demure until the light hits her, and then she becomes a 174-year old woman with dyed blonde hair and way too much rouge. I can't help liking her.
That type of toning can occur naturally on copper, and it happens more often than you might expect, but it isn't all that common either. But I will agree that in this case I think it had a little help.
I have an old Whitman Classic album of Lincoln cents and a lot of the uncirculated ones have toned Purple and green much like this. This coin may have been cleaned and put in a whitman album. I would think cleaning would speed the toning up.
Maybe it was dipped decades ago (it's been in my family for 30 years) and then placed in contact with paper. Oh well. At least it isn't brassy orange, which it probably was after being dipped.
Marianne making a call on toning is one of the toughest things there is to do. In person it's hard enough let alone based on pics. So as I said, it is possible that is original toning - it does happen. But to be quite honest, based on the pic - I thought otherwise. I could easy be wrong.
You could be wrong, GD, but it wouldn't be easy. I can see that toning's tricky, and I really like toned coins, so I'm in trouble. I'm thinking of sending this one to NGC, just for the education.
Regardless of what type of toning it is a very nice looking coin, then again Im a sucker for toned coins
Artifical or not, it's still a great looking coin. If you like the way it looks and aren't intending to sell it, it soesn't realyl matter whether the toning is artifical or not, lol. There is a slim chance the toning is natural... I've even seen some recent pennies tone some weird colors. I have a 1964 cent that has taken on a magenta tone to it. Just depends on the environment where it is kept. If I had to hazard a guess, your coin likely was cleaned a long time ago, and the toning likely occured after the cleaning as a side effect of it having been cleaned. That's just a guess though.
