Toning: How much does it increase Value?

I suspect that this recent craze for toning on a coin will deminish as the amount of the faked ones grows. Right now there are even Toned Coin web sites and many subjects, such as this one poping up more and more.
I may be wrong but like Beanie Babies, Sporting cards, Hot Wheel cars and many other temporary crazes, I think toned coins too will slowly fade away as a monitary growth item. Naturally the massive quantity of AT coins will also effect the future of this.
There have been numerous posts on forums lately on possible methods of toning coins and many people will start doing that if they suspect it will increase the value. Many too have claimed they can tell the difference in a AT or NT coin. Possibly but not so for the massive amount of collectors out there.

 

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PCGS just recently announced that they have implemented the use of technology that will do just that............detect AT coins.

Chris

 

I think this may have gotten a Plus MS-63+ grade if I had waited a little longer to have it graded

 

My apology. I misinterpreted the press release.

Chris

 

I think you missed it.

I said, the slab not withstanding, with the toning $55.

IE, what someone is willing to pay for it toning and all, is what it's worth.

 

Wouldn't really make much difference if they really did anyway. If you think about the fact that there are possibly many millions of coin collectors out there in the USA alone and only thousands even know of TPGS's. Maybe a hundred thousand but in reality how many people really use or try PCGS?
With millions and millions of people collecting coins, it is really impossible to tell who is right now heating a coin on the stove to make it more valuable.

 

I am still trying to figure out how Lehigh guessed that $488 final bid. You should give up poker, Paul, and start playing the horses...

 

Carl,

I understand that you have a right to your opinions no matter how outdated they are, but the topic of rainbow toning is one of the more complex in the numismatic arena. People ask questions and seek real answers. Your responses on this topic are tantamount to a spiteful rant and they are not based at all on reality.

You refer to the rainbow toned coin market as a recent craze as if it popped up last year. These coins have been driving significant premiums because of their superlative eye appeal for years. I will not indulge you in an argument as to when the market prices took off. Some will point to the late 90's others will say a few years after the turn of the century. Instead, I will provide an example. This is a rainbow toned MS65 1886 Morgan Dollar that I purchased in 2002.



At the time, the Numismedia Wholesale value was $100. I paid $719 for this coin which was over 7X wholesale. This proves two things. First, rainbow toned coins have been driving significant premiums for at least 8 years and they are not a fad. To compare rainbow toned coins to beanie babies and hot wheels is ludicrous. Why you ask? Because the second thing this coin proves is that eye appeal never goes out of style.

You may ask "why didn't these coins always drive the huge premiums that they command today?" Bag toned Morgans certainly existed 20-30 years ago and could be had for a scant premium by the collector that was so inclined to covet such coins. What changed in the market that caused the rapid increase in these coins? The answer to these questions is two fold, the internet and digital photography. Without these two things, most coins were sold via brick & mortar coin shops and in person at auctions & shows. The ability to photograph and market these incredibly attractive coins simply didn't exist. In fact, many collectors had never seen an attractive rainbow toned coin before.

With the advances in both online marketing and improvements in digital photography, it became possible for an average collector like myself to showcase these coins with ease. Look at the Heritage image from 2002. The quality is extremely poor by today's standards but fantastic at the time. Here is what the coin looks like using modern technology.





You then point to the impending doom of the rainbow toned coin market as a result of artificially toned coins. While you are correct that artificial toning is the biggest threat to the rainbow toned coin market, your analysis is fatally flawed. It makes no difference how many people collect state quarters and call themselves coin collectors. It also makes no difference how many idiots are out there cooking coins on their stove to yield an obviously AT coin.

The rainbow toned market is a niche market within the rare coin market. Any collector of rare coins worth his salt has heard of and uses the TPG's. The real rare coin collectors only use PCGS & NGC. You stated that there are a massive number of AT coins and that many admit to not being able to tell the difference between NT & AT. This statement is ridiculous. I venture that any experience toned coin collector as well as the TPG's can weed out 99% of the AT coins that are produced. It is only a small group of highly skilled coin doctors that are able to get their AT coins graded.

The real threat of AT coins is that the TPG's will lose consumer confidence in their ability to weed out 99% of the AT coins. If the methods for artificially toning coins becomes common knowledge and the TPG's can't discern the difference at a high enough level. Collectors might abandon the market all together. The other possibility is that the TPG's would simply stop grading toned coins entirely making those coins already encapsulated more valuable, not less.

Just know, if you intend on giving out misinformation and bad advice about rainbow toned coins, I will be right here to correct you!

 

I collected cards for a really long time and they dwindled because they made billions of them. theres 3 new products a week making them not rare. Beanie babies are the same thing, man made and when demand went up so did the product. With toning the demand is high but there is no way the product can go up. take this coin for instance.

theres 49,900,000 of this date/mint mark and nobody could ever duplicate this coin. Id bet my wife and kids you couldn't bake up a replica of this one. therefore this coin has endless value to collectors. I agree with Lehigh, there is no limit to what the coin will go for, and theres no bottom either. With me I see coins that tell me I have to have them. For instance I was in the Local shop today and there was a guy that brought in over 900 silver dimes. I seen one I absolutely had to have. turned out to be a $2.00 canadien dime that i would have paid a monster chunk for.so yea thats my two cents


basically to answer the OP's question.........there is no answer. the X will be higher the lower the price but in some case its a case of how many people just have to have this coin.

 

I wanted to touch upon what both Paul and Carl have written.

Paul has taken up the statements regarding the internet and quality digital photography that I have been making for at least five years. Many folks wonder why they hadn't seen wonderfully toned coins in as great a quantity in the 1970s, 1980s or early 1990s and the answer is largely do to the internet and quality digital photography. Prior to the advent of these two items the only way a typical collector or dealer would have access to wonderfully toned coins would be to know someone who specialized in them and then to meet up with that person at a show or a shop while the person had the coins in-hand. This just didn't happen very often and doesn't happen very often today, either. However, the ability for serious students of photography to take quality digital images exploded in the late 1990s and early 2000s and this made sharing images of such coins trivial since the internet had already largely broken through in the mid-1990s and ebay, many coin auction sites and coin boards as we know them today were established in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

To put this into perspective, think about two things. The first is to think about how many wonderfully toned coins you see in-hand when you meet up with folks at shows or shops vs how many quality digital images you see on the internet. I would venture to say that most folks see far more wonderfully toned coins via the internet than they do in-hand. The second is to think about how many sports highlights, new stories, oddball videos, auctions of all types or anything else of interest you can immediately access via the internet vs how long it would take to find all those items at your local library only fifteen years ago. There is no comparison; the volume of information and ease of access is so much greater today that nearly anything you want to see, read or hear is at your fingertips within seconds today vs perhaps not being available at any price only fifteen years ago. This can serve to skew how "common" wonderfully toned coins appear to be on coin boards.

Carl's comments about heating coins to make AT examples or of other methods certainly holds water in the sense that folks have always been fooled when they are in deeper than their knowledge. This has historically included altered date and mintmark coinage, counterfeits, dipped coins, recolored coins, repaired coins, the ability to accurately grade coins and AT. Fortunately, with the advent of mostly reliable TPG grading (currently NGC and PCGS) most collectors and dealers need know little about all of these factors. Sadly, it is my experience that most collectors and quite a few dealers are ignorant of most aspects of the hobby-industry. As always, if one is well informed and reasonably careful then the mistakes are much more rare and the return from the hobby-industry is much greater.

 

Lehigh,

I agree with you 1,000%, but don't try to convince JC that he is wrong. Let him keep extolling his philosophy to others. It will serve to eliminate some of our competition.

Chris