Question for debate

[Texans Coins]

Toned coins

 

A lot of the toned coins we know today are a result of the coin boards of yesteryear. I would imagine these old coin boards could still be found if you looked hard enough. My question is, would the grading companies consider them artificially toned nowadays? What are your thoughts?

 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a new / old (Depending on your preference) coin!

 

Marcus

 

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[Mohawk]

Hi Marcus,

It's good to see you! I haven't seen a post from you for a while. Your question is an interesting one......I'd say that if a coin was put into one of the old coin boards and allowed to tone over a period of years as the toned coins from yesteryear were allowed to do, the toning should rightly be considered natural. However, if anything is done to accelerate the process, such as heating, that would likely be recognizable as artificial. Also, I think that there's a "right look" for various coin that natural toning would have over artificial. One of my two main numismatic pursuits ( and my most important one) are coins of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman silver coins post-1844 are 83.3% Silver with a few exceptions. As such, they almost never tone in the same way American silver does, such as Morgan Dollars. Ottoman toning is always a little darker, and tends toward dark violet and blue coloration. I've never seen a rainbow toner among Ottoman silver and if I did, I'd be very suspicious of it because it's just not something those coins do. So that's likely something the NGC graders take into account when reviewing toned coins.......does it look natural? Does it look like it should?

 

Those are my thoughts! It's good to see you back!

~Tom

[RichH]

Hi Marcus,

I agree with Tom. It's my understanding that any coin that was stored in an envelope, album or board would be considered to have natural toning.

 

Merry Christmas,

 

Rich

[Texans Coins]

Yes, Tom and Rich. I felt the same way. I agree that the accelerated toning process would need heat of large amounts of chemicals, but the slow process should be ok, I would think.

 

 

Marcus

[Mr. Smith Guesser]

hi marcus,

 

that's a great question. because coin toning is simply the result of a chemical process....it's just oxidation. and it doesn't matter whether an individual accelerates this chemical process through some kind of intervention, or a coin become toned over a long period of time, it's still a chemical process.

 

moreover, if someone put a bright white coin in a sulphate-rich bag and kept it in a safe for decades we would consider that "natural toning". but the very act of the individual putting the coin in the bag, regardless of how long ago it was, is still technically a human intervention.

 

so i guess it all depends on your definition of "natural toning". should the definition of "natural toning" mean a coin changed color with absolutely no human intervention? or should it mean that a coin changed color with only minimum human intervention?

 

i don't know. to me, the word "natural" seems to imply no human intervention. but it seems impossible for a coin to have absolutely no human intervention, particularly since they would not exist without human beings. coins don't fall from the sky, at least they don't in my neighborhood.

 

take a look at the photo below:

this is a piece of high-grade copper ore that i picked up at a copper mine in china. there's no doubt that the oxidation here is completely natural with no human intervention. to me, this is truly "natural".

 

but, like i said, coins don't occur in nature. they are only produced by humans. so at the end of the day, i'd say "natural toning" can not mean absolutely no human intervention.

 

rather, i think the grading companies are ultimately trying to evaluate intent. if an individual intentional alters a coin's color, then it would be considered "artificially toned". and, on the other hand, if a coin changes color without the owner's intent, then it is considered "natural". so i think it's all about intent.

 

but the evaluation of a person's intent is difficult to impossible. however, i'm glad that the grading companies do designate "artificial" toning because i think it helps to obstruct "coin doctors" from taking advantage of ignorant buyers.

[CBC]

I think "intent" is the key. The original bags the Treasury Dept used to store millions of Morgan dollars for decades contributed to the widely varying shades of toning seen today, but the Treasury didn't put the coins in those bags with the intent of producing toning: their intent was to conveniently and safely ship and store them. They put Mint sets in cardboard in the 40's and 50's to protect the coins in mailing, not to produce toning. Collectors used cardboard holders that produced "album toning", but the intent was to protect and display the coin, not tone it. (Unfortunately for me and a lot of other collectors, an "improvement" was introduced in the late '60's - PVC - with disastrous results).

 

Artificial toning is intentional. It is not an unintended consequence of other actions. Some examples are so bizarre that anyone can recognize them as artificial (eBay is full of them), but I suspect that some AT coins have been certified by NGC and PCGS, and I suspect that many coins that were not intentionally toned have been rejected by NGC and PCGS as AT. As "coin doctors" get better at disguising their efforts, this will continue to be a problem for collectors who value toning. I'm sort of neutral on the subject of toning. I don't avoid toned coins, I appreciate really nice toning but I won't pay a huge premium for a toned coin.

[RichH]

Totally agree on "intent" being the key.

 

Right now I am collecting NGC certified Morgan CC GSA's and looking for pieces that exhibit at least 90 degrees of obverse crescent rim toning.

I feel pretty confident that this toning is accepted as "original" among numismatists.

 

Cheers !

 

Rich

[Mr. Smith Guesser]

thinking about this more...

you could make a good argument that the human being itself is a product of nature. and therefore, anything a human being does is "natural". is there anyone who would argue that a dog barking is unnatural?

 

i know i'm just arguing semantics at this point. and i know what the coin graders are ultimately trying to convey with the words "artificial" and "natural". but i love pedantry.

 

the merriam-webster dictionary defines natural as "existing in nature and not made or caused by people : coming from nature". so this conflicts with my argument here. but i disagree with the merriam-webster definition in that i believe the human being is not separate from nature.

 

so i think a more accurate description for "artificially toned" coins is "unintentionally toned". i told ya, i love pedantry.

 

[RichH]

Of course not everything humans do is natural .

 

As Gunny Highway stated in Heartbreak Ridge " Jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft is not a natural act"

[Mr. Smith Guesser]

rich,

 

yeah, i see where you're going with that. jumping out of an airplane definitely goes against the human instinct for survival. it certainly goes against my survival instincts. and so do things like suicide, yet people do sometimes commit suicide. i'll have to think about that more.

 

but let me ask you this (not to get way off topic)... if a human being plants a tree, is that tree natural? by the merriam-webster definition it can't be natural since it was directly caused into existence by a human.

 

and what about human reproduction? babies are caused into existence because...well, you know how it works. by the merriam-webster definition, babies are not natural since it requires human beings to make them.

 

again, this is all just semantics. i think we need a new word to describe something that is unintentionally caused by a non-conscience entity. and that could replace what we now call "natural". but then we could argue all day about what is and what is not consciousnesses.

 

hey, we're mixing philosophy and coin collecting. did you ever think that was possible?

 

love that movie by the way. heartbreak ridge is one of the best war films of all time. "i been pumping ***** since christ was a corporal".

unfortunately it gets overshadowed by films like, full metal jacket, platoon, and apocalypse now, which are all also just as awesome.

[RichH]

So if a human plants a tree and lets say we agree that the tree is unnatural by the webster definition, what about the seedlings from that tree, is the next tree also unnatural ? Logically , probably yes, but that doesn't seem right.

 

I am a pretty avid flyfisherman ( have flyfished the Gunpowder outside Balt ) Most trout are initially stocked via hatchery, but in lots of streams they survive. When do they stop (if ever) from being considered a stocked trout ?

 

To bring somewhat back to coins, the trout's color changes due to the environment and diet, that's natural.. The wild trout are much more vibrant in color then the stocked ones.

 

In this case.my opinion is that a stocked trout that has survived four seasons is now "wild" as it has adapted to the environment, and escaped danger from anglers , birds of prey, bear, etc . These trout can also reproduce, and genetically I think it can still be determined that this 1st generation came off the stocking. So are these wild ? Every fisherman I know would say wild, or natural as ya gotta draw a line here somewhere.

 

Also we should bring off topic if need to go further, this was a really good question

and we are now straying too far.

 

Cheers !

[Mr. Smith Guesser]

agreed. i don't want to stray too far off the toned coins issue, because....well i care more about coins than semantics.

 

but (i promise this is the last off-topic) Gunpowder is very nice. It's so close to my house, I could probably hit a golf ball into it. i fish up there all the time.