PCGS The Standart for the Rare Coin Industry

Silver coins stored loosely, or in paper envelopes, or casually in bureau drawers, etc., tend to acquire golden or gray toning over a period of time and can be quite attractive. A few years ago I inadvertently left a Bowers and Merena one-ounce silver medal exposed on the surface of an oak desk drawer. I had put the piece there and had forgotten about it. Several months later I lifted it from its position, and the reverse was toned the most gorgeous electric blue and iridescent hues I had ever seen!

Dr. Sheldon suggests that copper cents, if stored in earth in a flower pot, or left on a windowsill exposed to the weather, will tone attractively. This brings up the question: when is a coin naturally toned, and when is it artificially toned? In the strictest sense, coins stored in National and other album pages are artificially toned, but numismatists view them otherwise.

Although I haven't seen a definition for "artificial toning" in print, it seems to refer to a type of toning produced by heat, chemicals, or other substances and applied to a coin over a short period of time. Natural toning tends to be irregular. The rims or edges of a coin are apt to be darker than the centers, or at least differently toned. Artificial toning is often more uniform.

Those with patience and a knack for experimentation can come up with some interesting toning procedures. If I were to take a Morgan silver dollar and put it in the oak desk drawer in which I had put the silver Bowers and Merena medal earlier, and left it there for two months, and if it acquired beautiful iridescent toning, would the toning be natural or artificial? This is a point to ponder. A dealer who has made a specialty of toning coins artificially pointed with great pride to a common date Morgan silver dollar illustrated in full color in one of my competitor's auction catalogues. "That's my color!" he exclaimed, "Didn't I do a good job when I retoned the coin?"

When we sold the Norweb Collection it included some of the finest silver dollars ever to cross the auction block. Chris Napolitano, one of America's leading specialists in Liberty Seated coins acquired three beautiful Proof dollars, pieces which had been in the Norweb Collection for decades and which had been originally acquired shortly after the turn of the century. The three pieces each displayed beautiful iridescent toning. The buyer sent these to a leading grading service, which returned two of them stating that they were artificially toned and could not be slabbed! Frustrated, he sent them to another grading service which cheerfully slabbed them, both at a grade higher than we assigned in the auction catalogue.