I opened a box of halves today. I can't understand how so many (67) toned coins ended up in one box. Dates ranging from 1971-2023. All different stages and colors of toning. Ranging from goldish to purples and blues. There is a reason I just can't figure it out. I have opened .any half boxes and never seen this. Pics don't really show the purple and blue colors. Looks more bronze in pics. Any ideas?
It looks like someone was experimenting with artificially toning coins (chemicals, heat, etc) and then turned in the rejects back to the bank.
Yes, I concur with heat. Even without the intent to artificially tone them, that could happen if they were stored in old paper envelopes in a hot attic, or something like that. For instance, summer temperatures here in attic spaces in the Deep South can get pretty oven-like sometimes.
While it's possible they could have been deliberately tinkered with as part of someone's AT project (and these were the ones that didn't result in wild colors), I'm more of the personal opinion that this was environmental, in this particular case.
Those are pretty extreme, but not uncommon to find these colors from paper rolls. I am in the environmental camp also.
The patterns and variety of colors (quite different on each of the coins I can see) makes me think it was not the environment. I would expect a bit more uniformity between the coins and colors that aren't like the ones I see here.
@Pickin and Grinin those don't look as extreme. The first is a bit more unusual but it look more plausible to be caused from the environment it was in.
Maybe I have been out of the game for a while. But as a roll guy that fills em, and stashes em, the tones aren't very far off.
Maybe a little suspicious but it's not impossible that it's natural, and the lack of uniformity could just be they came from several sources before being put into circulation by someone that didn't know or didn't care what they're worth. Maybe even put into circulation because of the toning (not all people see it as attractive and thus valuable). Or someone that was into toned coins either gave it up, or passed their collection to someone else that didn't see value in them beyond face value. Some artificial toning is obvious, usually a lot more obvious than this, but I don't know how to classify toning that someone may have let happen on purpose that could easily have just happened because of the way they were stored. Coins could end up this way without intentional help though so I'd hesitate to rule these as artificial.
