Tooling?

savitale

Can folks show me some examples of what tooling looks like? I'm having trouble figuring it out.

tincup

Just to be clear... I am assuming you are referring to post mint tooling? Where someone intentionally enhances features of a coin, to make the coin appear to be a higher grade and thus deceive potential buyers? Example... mechanically adding lines on a Mercury dime to make it appear to be Full Split Bands?

Reason I ask is that the US Mint does 'enhance' its worn dies from time to time by re-engraving certain features. I find them rather fascinating, sometimes they are very crude. But of course, they are legitimate Mint products.

savitale

Yes, tooling on coins, not on dies. Many coins are holdered as "tooled" but unless someone points to the exact spot with an arrow I usually can't find it.

PeakRarities

From NGC Website - “TOOLED refers to either the smoothing of a coin's fields to remove scratches, corrosion and other forms of damage or to the restoration of lost details through use of a graver or knife. When a single side of the coin is affected, the terms OBV TOOLED and REV TOOLED are used.”

Heres an easy to see example I found on heritage, you can see the hairlines where someone attempted to remove the spot.

TomB

This question is so broad that it is similar to asking if someone could show you what toning looked like. However, aside from attempting to hide or remove problems on the surface of a coin, tooling also refers to the attempt to reproduce lost details and can end up with either very deceptive or comical results. Below is an 1805/4 Draped Bust half dollar with a very rare die state and someone tooled the centers of the obverse stars to give them radials. It might look obvious now that you know it is there, and it looks obvious to me as well, but it fooled PCGS the first time when the coin was certified in a problem-free holder. The cert number is now inactive after PCGS was notified.

PerryHall

A common form of tooling is to use an Xacto knife to create full split bands on a Mercury dime. Not sure if this technique is ever used on Franklin halves to create full bell lines.

PerryHall

In the pre-slab era, I once bought a nice looking raw Indian gold eagle and discovered that the inside of the U in PLURIBUS had numerous fine parallel scratches. It looked like someone tried to clean out some crud that was inside the U using a needle or pin to scrape it out. I returned that coin without hesitation.

Fairlaneman

What PerryHall is talking about.
.

savitale

@DeplorableDan said:
From NGC Website - “TOOLED refers to either the smoothing of a coin's fields to remove scratches, corrosion and other forms of damage or to the restoration of lost details through use of a graver or knife. When a single side of the coin is affected, the terms OBV TOOLED and REV TOOLED are used.”

Heres an easy to see example I found on heritage, you can see the hairlines where someone attempted to remove the spot.

Thanks. I usually associate hairlines with cleaning. For a spot removal example like this, is there a good way to distinguish between "cleaning" and "tooling"?

Walkerguy21D

See across the room tooling, to remove scratches and damage.

At least the reverse is ok.

PeakRarities

@savitale said:

@DeplorableDan said:
From NGC Website - “TOOLED refers to either the smoothing of a coin's fields to remove scratches, corrosion and other forms of damage or to the restoration of lost details through use of a graver or knife. When a single side of the coin is affected, the terms OBV TOOLED and REV TOOLED are used.”

Heres an easy to see example I found on heritage, you can see the hairlines where someone attempted to remove the spot.

Thanks. I usually associate hairlines with cleaning. For a spot removal example like this, is there a good way to distinguish between "cleaning" and "tooling"?

Someone else may have a better answer to that question, but as @TomB has mentioned, "Tooling" is somewhat of a broad term, as is "cleaning". Regardless, the coin has been intentionally manipulated. I think whenever they're confident a pointed metal object (i.e. tool) was used as the applicator of the manipulation, a "tooling" designation might be more appropriate than "cleaning".

jayPem

@TomB said:
This question is so broad that it is similar to asking if someone could show you what toning looked like. However, aside from attempting to hide or remove problems on the surface of a coin, tooling also refers to the attempt to reproduce lost details and can end up with either very deceptive or comical results. Below is an 1805/4 Draped Bust half dollar with a very rare die state and someone tooled the centers of the obverse stars to give them radials. It might look obvious now that you know it is there, and it looks obvious to me as well, but it fooled PCGS the first time when the coin was certified in a problem-free holder. The cert number is now inactive after PCGS was notified.

If this was contemporary graffiti, I'd be seriously interested in this coin!
Even if it's a recently tooled, boneheaded attempt to "up" the grade, I'd still be delighted to aquire it at a steep discount..... simply because it's on my short list of coins that I'd love to have but probably won't ever stretch for at the current price.

WaterSport

There is also a thin definition line between Tooling and Damaged as determined at PCGS. As in damaged caused by a "tool" ..Punch marks come to mind and the term could be posted on the holder as either or.

WS