For a brief moment, I thought I'd finally stumbled upon an example of the HOLY GRAIL of rainbow toned coins! 1 1

[James at EarlyUS.com]

You can probably guess why it turned out NOT to be so, but it sure was close . . . .

 

Edited June 1, 2022 by James at EarlyUS.com

[MarkFeld]

I bet you didn’t think that - not even for a “brief moment”.

[James at EarlyUS.com]

On 6/1/2022 at 5:53 PM, MarkFeld said:

I bet you didn’t think that - not even for a “brief moment”.

Mark, do you think the time span was even longer  ?

Kidding - no, I really did think I'd found something extremely special.  I have been looking for a rainbow-toned steel cent literally for decades.  To that point, I FINALLY started sifting through a bag (around a thousand or so) of steel cents I'd bought a long time ago and realized that about 150 of them were reprocessed examples - like this one.  That's why it was able to acquire toning.

In all these years, I have never found even a single bona-fide rainbow toned steel cent.

Edited June 3, 2022 by James at EarlyUS.com

[FlyingAl]

Rust coloring is never attractive on any coin... just my opinion. 

[physics-fan3.14]

On 6/1/2022 at 2:13 PM, James at EarlyUS.com said:

You can probably guess why it turned out NOT to be so, but it sure was close . . . .

 

Hey James, how about a rainbow toned 43S Steel toned with a rainbown... certified PL by NGC? (NGC MS-66-PL)

Yeah, I've got one. It's a bit hard to see the colors in this pic, but they are clear in hand.