Jefferson Nickel toning question.

jesbroken

I've noticed many Toned Jefferson Nickels have the same small spot of toning in the center of the face and not so much elsewhere. Is this normal or AT? A couple of sellers on ebay have many of them, but I do not wish to mention them by name. Just not familiar with Jefferson toning characteristics. Here is a sample of a 1953 D Jefferson Nickel which is one of many various dates.
Thank you,
Jim

Mr_Spud

That’s a characteristic of AT. If they stopped the process just a little bit earlier it would be uniform yellow gold. Here’s my old AT education picture from back in the day. Shows the progression of colors as the coin went through the AT process, same coin with a picture taken every few seconds as it was ATd. You can stop the process at any color you want, but it’s easy to hesitate and you get that purple in the middle because purple is the next color that appears as the thin film interference layer gets thicker. It’s actually hard not to end up with that shade of purple on the center areas on at least one side of the coin.

Mr_Spud

You can see that purple somewhere on all of these ones that I remember were done in a way to make the thin film interference layer uneven on the coins. I was going for uneven to get arcs and peripheral toning that was different than the rest of the coin and also sometimes the portrait devices. Nickels and golden dollars were the easiest to AT in a more controlled manner, but clad did it too. I never tried silver, these were just AT experiments to make AT versus NT displays to teach people.

jesbroken

@Mr_Spud said:
That’s a characteristic of AT. If they stopped the process just a little bit earlier it would be uniform yellow gold. Here’s my old AT education picture from back in the day. Shows the progression of colors as the coin went through the AT process, same coin with a picture taken every few seconds as it was ATd. You can stop the process at any color you want, but it’s easy to hesitate and you get that purple in the middle because purple is the next color that appears as the thin film interference layer gets thicker. It’s actually hard not to end up with that shade of purple on the center areas on at least one side of the coin.

Thank you Mr_Spud. Interesting progression. I have seen this before ATS, was it yours? I felt they were AT as there were so many of them the same.
Jim

Mr_Spud

I posted those ATS just a few months ago, but I’ve posted them at least a dozen times here over the years. I did all this in 2005 when I was in the Charlotte Coin club. I did presentations of AT versus NT at the club and got invited to show some of them as a display for a coin art exhibit that Jamie Frankie held. He was the artist that designed the Bison nickels and Jefferson Facing Forward. He was in our coin club and the first time he came to a club meeting I was doing a presentation with toned bison nickels and he was impressed and asked me to make the display at his coin art exhibition. I still have part of that display, a set of toned Bison nickels in a capitol holder in my office at work.
Here’s a picture I took recently of them, they still look the same as when I ATd them

Mr_Spud

I might as well throw these in too, these were made with a few different techniques

ricko

@Mr_Spud... Thank you for showing them again... Your experiments are far superior to anything I have done, and I was not diligent enough to keep records. Cheers, RickO

Mr_Spud

I think this fits in here too. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_interference . Notice how steel closely matches the color progression of nickels as the film gets thicker. Nickels are just more vibrant looking than steel.

DRE

Are these coins being mounted in a vice and heated by a blow torch, jeweler's torch or the like? Or are they being placed in an oven, jeweler's burn-out oven or equivalent?

Mr_Spud

I’m not going to give the details on the techniques I used back in the day to control the process better, but the ones on eBay that look like the one in the original post look like they were simply placed on a cookie sheet and popped in the oven. People that don’t know how easy it is to discolor nickels like that keep buying them.

I think it’s good for people to experiment a little like this so they won’t get fooled as easily.

DRE

Will the grading services grade and slab these or will they always consider the Unusual Color produced in this manner as damage? I seem to remember seeing both.

Mr_Spud

@DRE said:
Will the grading services grade and slab these or will they always consider the Unusual Color produced in this manner as damage? I seem to remember seeing both.

They will get a questionable color designation and no grade, especially if they have that baked purple color on them. They are easy to spot once you see some of them. I know if I go to a coin show, I can spot that purplish color from a distance and if I see that a dealer has a bunch of them in their case I don’t trust anything they sell.

There are also some naturally toned ones with a similar appearance that sometimes get the questionable color designation and sometimes get graded but they typically don’t have those purplish splotches. But if they have that purple and the toning goes right up and over the devices (the raised letters and portraits) like most of the eBay EZ-bake oven jobs do then it’s obvious that they were either ATd or stored improperly in a way that made the toning happen quickly and they won’t straight grade.