The Sad History of a Great Coin

BillJones

Here is an example of how a stupid coin doctor can ruin a great coin and how a smart one can repair it so that is acceptable to many collectors who can't find better. I don't own this piece any more. I sold it many years ago when I started my coin business to raise capital. Still the coin has a great history.

This is an 1806 Small 6 with stems (on the reverse) half cent. If you pull out your handy dandy Red Book you will see that this is one of the much better varieties in the Draped Bust Half Cent series. There are two minor varieties of this. This is the more common of the two. The other minor variety is so rare and so hard to spot that most collectors don't need to worry about it unless you a super hawk eyed cherry picker.

This coin is the discovery piece for the variety (found sometime in the 1880s), and it's been a traced to auctions back to 1895 when the Chapman Brothers sold it from the Richard Winsor collection for $2.60, which was 'big money" for a half cent back then. It was long considered to be the finest known example for the variety.

The coin passed through a number of major sales and collections, including the Joseph Brobston, Stacks' fixed price catalog, until it was sold to Lelan Rogers in 1968. Rogers had a type collection. Instead of building it with the most common high coins he could find, Rogers went for the rarest high grade coins that were available, and this piece was one them.

After Rogers owned it, a knit-wit bought it who thought he'd "improve it" buy making it red again. After that travesty the coin was recolored and started to make the rounds again. I bought the piece in the late 1980s. I sold it to a collector-dealer who eventually re-sold it to help put his kids through college.

So there is the story. I don't know where it is now, but it is still one heck of a coin. The piece that is now considered to be the finest known is a Proof-like Uncirculated. This piece also had a Proof-like look under the worked on surfaces. In short it is a pretty piece despite the issues.

291fifth

It reminds me of the tale of the art buyer who bought the "Bird In Space" sculpture by Brancusi. Eduard (Edward) Steichen famous artist and, especially, photographer, bought the piece directly from Brancusi in the early 20th century. The sculpture was mounted on a large piece of very natural wood complete with cracks, just as Brancusi wanted.

Following Steichen's death in the 1970's his wife sold the sculpture to the collector. Apparently the collector didn't think much of the wooden base and decided to improve it by filling in the cracks and painting it white.

I hate to think of what Brancusi or Steichen would have thought if they had still been living.

BillJones

That reminds me of a Rolls Royce my brother-in-law owned that was originally bought by the late exercise guru, Jack LaLanne. LaLanne was into the color black, so he had all of the walnut trim in the car painted black.

TopographicOceans

braddick

Terrific looking type coin. Honestly, for those not in the know, looks trouble-free. Would it slab today?

keets

so who committed the greater sin, the guy who dipped it or the guy who re-toned it??

winky

How about both !

kaz

Despite the human fumblings, the essential integrity and beauty of that piece remains.

rhedden

$2.60 for a half-cent worth of copper? Egad! These new-age 1890s collectors are quite the loonies! Why, they could have purchased a doctor's blood-letting kit or several aliquots of patent medicine with that money!

nankraut

Very interesting thread, Mr. Jones; thanks for sharing.

PRECIOUSMENTAL

The 1895 purchase would be $72.83 in todays money.

BillJones

<< <i>so who committed the greater sin, the guy who dipped it or the guy who re-toned it?? >>



The guy who dipped it hands down.

shish

"The idiot who dipped it hands down."

+1

luckybucks

There are some coins better left undoctored, this is one of them.

I can't imagine what the person who dipped this coin was thinking (perhaps we don't want to know).

keets

I'm not so sure that the person who first dipped it committed the greater offense.

just so there's no misunderstanding(although I accept that there will be), without a doubt the collector/dealer who initially dipped it shouldn't have. even so, if the coin had been left as it was it would have eventually re-toned naturally. I would go as far as to say that with that natural process the misguided dip may have been undetectable. persons like BillJones who had an intimate knowledge of the coin from prior ownership may have known, but probably no one else.

as for the "re-toning" process, it is unnatural and done with the aid of chemicals in much the same fashion as AT'd Silver coins. the surface of the coin now has an artificial skin. and while we're on the topic of old Copper, does anyone actually believe that all the mid 19th Century RD Large Cents weren't dipped??? if we are going to be outraged(which seems to be in vogue these days) shouldn't we be outraged about them, also?? or should we think they are alright and, dare I say it, market acceptable.

be honest, now, and not politically correct.

BillJones

Using the natural process to re-tone a copper coin is hardly perfect or risk free. Once the coin has been stripped of its protective layer of toning, things can go horribly wrong. The piece can grow green or black corrosion spots. The chemicals that were used to strip the piece can keep on eating away at the coin. The toning will not necessarily be attractive.

Without seeing what the coin looked like after it had been dipped, I can't condemn the person who re-toned it. I will continue to condemn the person who dipped it. That was just plain stupid, especially if that person had any idea of the coin's providence. All one would have needed was the Brobston sale catalog to have known that.

keets

Without seeing what the coin looked like after it had been dipped

thank you for volunteering that information, it clarifies the OP somewhat. with that said I really think both should be condemned and each of us can make a personal judgment about who committed the greater sin. if AT'ing Silver is wrong then it follows that AT'ing Copper is wrong.

291fifth

Late 19th century collectors would retone copper coins by placing them in a cloth pouch and attaching it to their clothing in the underarm area. The coins would retone naturally, often very quickly. A discerning eye could spot such retoned coins but, overall, the results were apparently quite good.

I tried this method on Civil War Tokens back in the early 1980's. It worked quite well. The tokens looked much better in their retoned state than when they had been cleaned.

keets

The coins would retone naturally, often very quickly.

maybe I'm biased or just plain stupid, but my standards are that "cloth pouch and attaching it to their clothing in the underarm area" doesn't constitute natural.

ColonelJessup

<< <i> if AT'ing Silver is wrong then it follows that AT'ing Copper is wrong. >>

.

I'm afraid you've got it backwards.

AT'ing copper is not wrong. EAC grading, the first taxonomy of this sort and the standard to which this group, at the very core of American numismatics, still adheres, recognizes problems and "work" as part of a continuum of quality.

There is no "on-off switch".

AT'ing copper is "market-acceptable". Maybe not to you or I or TPG's, but then EAC actually invented/codified grading, so what's up with that?

Or could it be us, and the simplistic need for the quantification of virtue.

crazyhounddog

Great story, Bill.
Thanks for sharing the coin and the story.

keets

although the EAC has always been its own entity and has tied up all the best Copper I don't accept that it writes the rules on what is good or bad.

Boosibri

<< <i>although the EAC has always been its own entity and has tied up all the best Copper I don't accept that it writes the rules on what is good or bad. >>



The point I think is that it isn't about "good " or "bad" it is about a continuum of quality, not pass or fail.

keets

I understand that, what I don't understand(or accept) is how a re-tone job is seen as restoring the coin to its "continuum of quality" when it is just as artificial as AT'd Silver. the argument that it is acceptable because it can control the outcome vs. a natural re-toning which is out of anyone's control is spurious at best(us Humans love the illusion of control).

Bill's word choice in the OP was correct, the coin was recolored and not re-toned, that's my fault for mixing the two words up. a coin will re-tone naturally, anything else as done by the EAC or another is more accurately re-coloring and is artificial. I don't know how that is seen as returning the coin to where it may have ended up, its continuim.

Zoins

Are there photos of what this coin looked like originally and when it was red?

Zoins

<< <i>Late 19th century collectors would retone copper coins by placing them in a cloth pouch and attaching it to their clothing in the underarm area. The coins would retone naturally, often very quickly. A discerning eye could spot such retoned coins but, overall, the results were apparently quite good.

I tried this method on Civil War Tokens back in the early 1980's. It worked quite well. The tokens looked much better in their retoned state than when they had been cleaned. >>



Good to know about this aspect of collecting. Collectors back then were quite ingenious.

OldEastside

This reminds me of a mansion on Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills that Sheik Mohammad Al Fassi owned in the late 70's
he bought it and the first thing he did was paint all the marble statues, dozens of them around the perimeter of the
property he painted them different bright vivid colors..........it was horrendous , I was a courier back then and I'd
take Sunset past there twice a week.........and boy did it stick out, it burnt down in 1980 and from what I hear is
all the neighbors were cheering for the fire


Steve

Swampboy

I wonder where that coin is now.


Maybe one day this great thread will be resuctated.

ColonelJessup

Perhaps one might consider the difference between mortal and venial. In the battle between Darkness and Light are found more than 70 Grades of Grey.

Out here in ContinuumLand, boots on the ground, philosophies themselves less often applicable to the practical demands of both physical and consensual reality, we shrug. The coin looks better than it was with no apologies needed.

As is noted by Professor Irwin Corey in Musings: Quarks, Twerks and Snarks in Quantum Mechanics and Their Influence on Feynman's Equations as Manifested in Bongo . . . .

"The argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin seems less urgent than the problem about what to do with some of those dead angel's bodies after sticking the pin in something"

Analyst

Jones: <<Without seeing what the coin looked like after it had been dipped>>

Keets: <<thank you for volunteering that information, it clarifies the OP somewhat. with that said I really think both should be condemned and each of us can make a personal judgment about who committed the greater sin. if AT'ing Silver is wrong then it follows that AT'ing Copper is wrong.>>

Yes, the answer depends upon what was done to a large cent to 'brown' it. Some methods are very damaging.

Colonel Jessup: << afraid you've got it backwards. ... AT'ing copper is not wrong. EAC grading, the first taxonomy of this sort and the standard to which this group, at the very core of American numismatics, still adheres, recognizes problems and "work" as part of a continuum of quality. >>

IMO, Keets is correct, for the most part

A) He was referring to mainstream grading, not EAC grading.

As the colonel implies, EAC grading holds that all coins are gradable, including those that have been terribly wronged. They are not agreeing with or condoning wrongdoing. EAC graders deduct points for the consequences of processes that they regard as harmful. A previous AU-55 grade copper, by EAC standards, that has been artificially toned might very well be downgraded to EAC VF-30.

The Colonel is correct in implying that competent EAC graders consider some kinds of modifications to be less harmful than do competent mainstream graders. For example, there are instances of corrosion control that would be considered very damaging by mainstream graders who perceive what was done, though would be considered only slightly harmful by EAC graders.