Tag Archives: questionable toning

2024 eBay Bidding Results

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Each year I review my online acquisitions from eBay and share results to show how difficult and often expensive it is to bid on raw coins and then attempt to holder them with PCGS.

Click the photo below to see my 2023 results, published in Greysheet.

This post analyses my 102 eBay purchases. I was only satisfied with 26 coins, or about 26% of my purchases.

Typically I keep coins that grade high, adding them to my toned coin showcase on PCGS. I’ll share a link to that later. I return other coins to eBay or consign some to Hibid auctioneers to mitigate losses.

I know that sharing this as transparently as I am here will invite negative comments about my choices. Fair enough. But I have been a collector for 60 plus years and am a respected numismatist, writing for Coin World, Coin Update News and Greysheet and being a past member of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee of the US Treasury.

My intent here is to show the difficulty of getting coins graded, vying for a numerical score on the Sheldon scale.

In the past I was able to get my toned coins graded fairly regularly at PCGS. But the proliferation of coin doctors honing their artificial toning skills have changed the playing field. Graders now are often reluctant to assign a numerical grade to coins with rainbow patina.

In this post you will see some startling results concerning PCGS and their default grade of Questionable Toning. It has become so bad that I no longer submit toned coins to the company.

I am good at identifying rainbow patina. As proof, I have one of the most beautiful showcases on the PCGS website. Also, I always invest in TrueView photos because I keep my coins in a bank box.

Click the photo below to view my 100-coin showcase:

Now for the upsetting news.

Coins below are from two 2024 submissions. All 16 coins were purchased on eBay, and all came back as Questionable Toning:

Here’s one of the Questionable Toning coins with the first photo from eBay and the second from PCGS TrueView:

After receiving these grades, I did complain to the company leadership. They were understanding and offered to re-grade these. I decided not to do that, sending some to NGC and cracking out others and sending those sent to Capital Coin Auction as raw, often recouping my expenditures.

PCGS seems to have a Questionable Toning default label even when there is no toning at all. Consider these two coins from the same Lincoln cent album, with one getting a “red” designation and another, brown, “Questionable Toning”:

I sent the 1932-D to NGC and received this grade:

At times during the year I became so frustrated with PCGS that I continued to resubmit coins marked as questionable only later to receive numerical grades.

Let consider my 1968-D end of roll toners.

As you can see, my first submission came can with one graded questionable color and the other graded MS64. Upon crack-out and resubmission, the same coins came back MS66 and MS65.

I did, however, score with PCGS on some of my toned eBay coins.

This one came back MS64:

I also scored two out of three with these and in retrospect agree with the cleaned designation, although it is very slight and still might have graded.

I also only buy from eBay dealers that accept returns. This coin was overly dipped with the photo enhanced so as not to show the true surface of the coin:

This one had damage that I missed initially, a gouge. It was my fault, but I took advantage of returns accepted.

I hope the transparency here generates some second thoughts about grading. Keep in mind, too, the oft-cited phrase that grades from holder companies are subjective, to a degree.

Finally, if you think getting toned coins graded at major slabbing companies is difficult, try getting them to affirm errors and varieties. If you are intent on doing that, at least check my post about errors and varieties that PCGS will holder. Click here for that.

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Proxiblog also has hundreds of followers on Facebook Coin Groups. To get the latest discussion and commentary, be sure to friend us by clicking here.

You can find more information about types, varieties, errors, grading, bidding and buying in Coin News Updated: The Essential Guide to Online Bidding. Please consider buying or gifting the work for a friend, as it underwrites this hobbyist blog. Thank you.

Authentic v. Doctored Toning

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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.

If you like posts like this, subscribe so you can be informed whenever there is a new article or column.

Proxiblog also has thousands of followers on Facebook Coin Groups, YouTube and social media. To get the latest discussion and commentary, be sure to friend us by clicking here.

You can find more information about types, varieties, errors, grading, bidding and buying in Coin News Updated: The Essential Guide to Online Bidding. Please consider buying or gifting the work for a friend, as it underwrites this hobbyist blog. Thank you.