Does AT or NT really matter anymore?
darktone
Posts: 8,437 ✭✭✭
With all the AT stuff being certified these days does it really matter anymore how the coin got it's toning? Every year the window of whats acceptable as far as toning gets bigger and bigger. Will a body bag for AT be a thing of the past in a few years? I know they are beautiful and many I would pay multiples of the list price for but I think the grading services owe it to collectors to label this stuff as being AT. Also the doctored pictures of neon toning really hinders the new generation of collectors to decipher what's real. mike
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Comments
<< <i>What matters if it is in a top 2 slab! >>
the more AT stuff that gets slabbed the more acceptable it becomes in the market place and I don't like AT coins being passed off as NT.
<< <i>the more AT stuff that gets slabbed the more acceptable it becomes in the market place and I don't like AT coins being passed off as NT. >>
More AT coins for the E-Bay sleezeballs to sell!!!
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." -Luke 11:9
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." -Deut. 6:4-5
"For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us." -Isaiah 33:22
<< <i>I doubt many people really know if something is NT or not. >>
Claw.....If you buy some big dollar high end coins you'd better know.
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<< <i>I doubt many people really know if something is NT or not. >>
Claw.....If you buy some big dollar high end coins you'd better know.
I don't pay premiums for psychedelicized Morgans. Sure some are NT, but how they heck can one be sure? The very nature of this thread indicates the grading services themselves can't tell.
<< <i>I doubt many people really know if something is NT or not.[/q
Agreed, we just throw our hard earned money to anyone and everyone selling anything with color. Doesn't matter if it's real toning or not. Just so we can say it's a toned coin is worth spending thousands of dollars. Does this help clear your thinking up at all?
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." -Luke 11:9
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." -Deut. 6:4-5
"For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us." -Isaiah 33:22
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<< <i>I doubt many people really know if something is NT or not. >>
Claw.....If you buy some big dollar high end coins you'd better know.
I don't pay premiums for psychedelicized Morgans. Sure some are NT, but how they heck can one be sure? The very nature of this thread indicates the grading services themselves can't tell. >>
Trust me Claw the coins like those I have in my sig line or not AT, and I only collect Walkers at the present anyway.
As for the grading services not being able to tell I will agree with you to a certain extent, and especially Nickel coinage including and most importantly Buffalos, because of a particular individual in the Chicago area that most of the big time dealers here know exactly who I'm talking about.
It's ahame that there are so many highend/highgraded Buffalos in some of the nicest collections out there, including the registry sets...... As a past Buffalo collector myself I know what I'm talking about on this one...... The guy is an artist...... Fortunately he can't do silver coins!
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<< I doubt many people really know if something is NT or not. >>
Claw.....If you buy some big dollar high end coins you'd better know. >>
I don't pay premiums for psychedelicized Morgans. Sure some are NT, but how they heck can one be sure? The very nature of this thread indicates the grading services themselves can't tell. >>
I tend to agree with CLW, the line between NT and AT has become very blurred, even at the high end and even with copper. Oxidation reactions are just that, oxidation reactions - and most oxidation reactions can be accelerated with enough chemistry/metallurgical knowledge and experimentation. I know a lot of members don't want to hear this. >>
Pushkin......If you know how to discern original skin from dipped/retoned and the natural process and pattern of toning then you should be able to tell..... If you don't know this then I would advise you to beware of buying toned coins, and especially if they are raw......
However there is an awful lot of the modern coins like Kennedys, etcetera that have been artificially toned even by the use of old Wayte Raymond albums in my opinion, just by the process you are talking about Pushkin through acceleration of the process.
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<< <i>Pushkin......If you know how to discern original skin from dipped/retoned and the natural process and pattern of toning then you should be able to tell >>
Puff, I don't disagree with you that knowledge and experience will provide valuable insights into what is accelerated toning and what is toning that has occurred over many years. However, I have come to believe that many coins now in top tier slabs, mainly moderns, but also a fair number of classical coins, obtained their toning via accelerated methods. I'm not saying it is easy to fool the "experts", but it is being done. An excellent analogy is art forgery and reproduction, except that with coins you don't have the technology to detect accelerated chemical reactions - because again, oxidation reactions are just that - chemistry. I worked for a number of years in a world class metallurgical research laboratory, I was a principal scientific investigator for part of that time, so I'm not just "blowing hot air", so to speak.
I posted similar sentiments some time back and took a lot of flack for saying so. OK, but a lot of people believe what they want to believe with relatively little scientific knowledge and experience to back up their beliefs.
edited to add: And those graders who spend 9 seconds or 20 seconds or whatever on a coin, I simply don't believe that a lot of accelerated toning (I use the term accelerated toning rather than AT becuase AT is more a religious term) is caught by them if it is done well. Good art forgeries have gone undetected for years and decades with the best experts studing them for months - to use the art forgery analogy, which isn't perfect, but which I believe is quite good. >>
Pushkin........ Nothing you've said above would I disagree with.
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<< <i>I doubt many people really know if something is NT or not. >>
Agreed, we just throw our hard earned money to anyone and everyone selling anything with color. Doesn't matter if it's real toning or not. Just so we can say it's a toned coin is worth spending thousands of dollars. Does this help clear your thinking up at all?
Actually it does seem that way at times. Part of the culture of this forum is emphasis on color and people are willing to pay a lot of extra money for it. When people are willing to pay extra for something, somebody else will find a way to create it.
To me it does. I collect all Morgans and any denomination dated xx97 & I like the no-brainer original ones. It's pretty easy to tell a real one from an AT one except for a few questionable ones and if I can't explain it then I just simply avoid buying it because I go for the original look, i.e. bag or album tone. You won't see me buying any red, blue, & green tonecoin2003 jobs that have no explainable pattern in NGC slabs for example and even if I see one in a PCGS slab I say that looks like a tonecoin2003 job and still avoid it. With a grumpy hardcore attitude like that I might pass up on a "real" one sometimes but so what?
I don't need PCGS or NGC to tell me what's original or AT because I already know what I like & it isn't the questionable or AT ones, no matter how pretty they are. Originality means more to me than pretty does.
Does it matter anymore? I don't really know...I'm not sure if it ever did "matter". If you like a coin (and it's price) buy it. If not, don't buy it. It's that simple.
jom
Joe
<< <i>It should matter, not only to collectors, but especially to the third-party graders as well >>
Joe, my main complaint is the top tier grading services putting clearly AT coins in slabs. mike
Very true, and they also exclude a lot of NT coins as "questionable," indicating that they can't tell AT from NT in a lot of cases.
And as clw54 said, as long as there is a market for toned coins, people will create them. With respect to Morgans, the raw materials are cheap and plentiful, and there's little risk involved. I think it would be interesting to study the correlation between AT Morgans and the price of the same coin untoned and raw. I'd be interested to see if the toning doctors ever fool with expensive coins given that the cheap ones are available in abundance.
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
I have always said, "if it's good enough for NGC or PCGS, it's good enough for me."
adrian