Are Colonial Coins generally immune from the crime of dipping and stripping?

Longacre

For every other series, it seems like it is a collector's birthright to crack, dip, and strip all coins with reckless abandon. It seems to me that colonial coins are generally immune from this mentality. Is this true? If so, is it because of the historic nature of the coins, the types of people who collect them, the non-acceptance among collectors of those coins, or some other reason?

michael

Are Colonial Coins generally immune from the crime of dipping and stripping?

NO!!!!!!!!!!!! been stripping and dipping before your great grandfather was born

but with emmersinig in manure piles for weeks/months on end and dells darkener tobacco juice and other el naturale recoloring agents many have been skillfully recolored over the years

ColonialCoinUnion

<< <i>For every other series, it seems like it is a collector's birthright to crack, dip, and strip all coins with reckless abandon. It seems to me that colonial coins are generally immune from this mentality. Is this true? If so, is it because of the historic nature of the coins, the types of people who collect them, the non-acceptance among collectors of those coins, or some other reason? >>



I agree with Michael in that some things have been going on for years -

But I believe Longacre's question was about modern techniques to try to get coins upgraded.

It happens less, but colonial coins are absolutely not immune to the same 'improvements' that we see in other areas. A high percentage of the coins (though of course not all) end up slabbed and in non-traditional colonial venues - such as Heritage.

There is a difference, however. Many colonial types and series are rare - very, very rare - with not much more 15 to 25 known examples in any grade and enough vagaries of strike and planchet quality to make each one as identifiable as a fingerprint. As such its a lot easier to trace a colonial to a previous appearance and know what it used to look like than it is to trace a Morgan or other coin of which there are thousands known. So in that sense its much harder to improve a colonial and reintroduce it as a whole new coin in a higher grade.

1794half1839

CCU makes a great point here. Because of the crude methods colonials were manufactured, they all have different characteristics, even specimens of the same die variety and state (ie planchet flaws, etc).

roadrunner

I'd like to hear more about the manure pile immersion technique.
How could something so "natural" be considered artificial? Are there books on the subject. Silver coins could never stand that scrutiny.

roadrunner

ColonialCoinUnion

Greg, you're freakin' me out by bumping all these ancient threads. I saw the subject and was about to respond and was surprised to see that I already did 3 years ago.

1794half1839

Sorry CCU, I have a lot of time on my hands these days....