Rainbow toned coins sell for multitudes more than retail values for the same mint and date, making them both idea for collecting and doctoring. The ability to tell the difference is vital. Otherwise you risk being fooled by artificial patina.
This 1884-O Morgan dollar recently sold at Heritage for $1,680 with a current asking price of $1,950. At MS66, the same coin without patina retails for $450.
Because of profit, coin doctors have devised all manner of fake toning techniques, including baking a coin wedged in a potato or cauliflower, storing a coin in a container with hardboiled eggs, heating it with a blow torch, leaving it in a mixture sulfur powder and petroleum jelly, dabbing it with bleach and even dousing it in cat urine (yuck).
The result usually is an artificial tone of yellow, burnt orange, blue and magenta hues, as in this coin:
Applying the right amount of heat can mute those colors in more believable hues of gold, red, blue and magenta, as in this coin below, which has a reasonable chance of being slabbed by a holdering company:
Because coin doctors are improving their toning skills, major holdering companies often are reluctant now to slab a rainbow coin with a numerical grade, questioning patina.
This coin came from an old album but was dubbed questionable by PCGS:
Album Toning
Certain vintage albums such as Wayte Raymond or Meghrig typically tone coins with natural patina over time. But if you don’t know artificial from genuine toning, you may be stuck with a sulfured coin like this from a seller who uses the brand name in his listing:
Compare the difference between a Morgan dollar toned in such an album and the above artificial one:
Vintage commercial and cardboard holders often color coins over time in vivid patinas as might be found in year sets, double mint sets, and Tidy House and American Savings boards. The issue here concerns unscrupulous sellers who swap out coins, taking the naturally toned ones and replacing them with doctored ones, as in this example:
Proxiblog has an article about sellers who swap out coins from 1947-58 double mint sets. Click here for that. Here’s an example from that post:
Often a holder label may contain chemicals that interact over years with the metal of a coin. Older PCI holdered coins tone beautifully in this manner. The brand has become synonymous with bright patina. Newer PCI holders count on your inability to distinguish real from fake color, as in these examples:
I have spent decades assembling a PCGS toned set across denominations. I purchased them from these holders, sets, rolls, albums and cases:
To view my 100-coin showcase, recently sold at GreatCollections, or the image to see TrueView pictures of my coins, see the photo below or open this YouTube video.
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