The coin of the immaculate conception
D205071
Posts: 3 ✭
Looking for ideas on how this tarnish perfect circle in the middle of the coin ? Thanks for your help
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D205071
Posts: 3 ✭
Comments
Looks like some sort of a stain. The same thing is on the reverse.
It could have been from the way it was stored. Hard to say exactly
how it happened unless you were there at the time.
While we cannot, normally, assign causes of specific toning or damage patterns on coins, I think in this specific case we can make an exception. The size, and the position, of this stain gives me a clue about exactly what caused it.
A coin cabinet ID tag.
Back in the days before the invention of plastic tombs to hermetically seal away our coins, coin collectors needed some other way to try to preserve their coins from the elements. Coin cabinets were the standard method. Coin cabinet trays are flat, with little cut-out depressions in which the raw coins can be placed. But one problem with this storage system is knowing where your coins came from in the tray system - if you, say, took a dozen coins out of your cabinet to look at them, photograph them, or show them off to your coin collecting friends, how would you know (a) what they were, and (b) where to put them back in the cabinet again when you're done?
The answer: coin cabinet ID tags. These were small, circular pieces of paper placed in the coin tray depressions, underneath the coins. You wrote on the tag any pertinent information about the coin, such as one might today write on the frame of a cardboard 2x2 or the paper insert of a coin flip. If /when you rearranged the coins in a cabinet, the tags moved too. And when coins were bought and sold, the tags went with the coin.
Such tags were normally made of paper or cardboard. And this paper and cardboard, and/or perhaps the ink used to write on the tags, might contain sulfur. If so, then this piece of sulfurous paper would be sitting right underneath the coin, in constant contact with it. This could then cause a round patch of toning, the size and shape of the tag.
I would take this toning pattern as a "good sign" that the coin has been sitting in collections for a long time (probably over 100 years) and that it hasn't been cleaned since it lived in a coin cabinet.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
Totally agree with Sapyx. I have seen this on lots of silver coins of Italy also. It's nice to see it graded by PCGS. I have seen many that are underweight.
Thank you guys so much! I’m a tig welder by trade and an amateur coin collector. Do you have any pictures of a coin cabinet I’d tag ? Can’t find anything online. Another question comes up is why would it be on both sides? Thanks again !
Also , can you still get a ms 62 grade with sulfur on the coin ?
The toning is perfectly "natural", in that all toning on any silver coin is caused by environmental sulfur. It was accumulated on the coin by accident and not by deliberate premeditated action, or accelerated by deliberately exposing the coin to a sulfurous environment, so by no definition would it qualify as "artificial toning". Indeed, I would postulate that if that long-ago collector had known the tag contained sulfur, they would not have used it but instead found a different piece of cardboard or paper to make a new tag out of. As such, this toning patch does not significantly affect the grade.
That's easy enough: the coin was indeed taken out of its cabinet slot at least once (probably multiple times), and when it was put back it was put back "upside down" compared to how it had been before, so that the other side of the coin was then resting on the tag and exposed to the sulfur spot.
A quick google search for "old coin cabinet" gave a bunch of examples, including these links:
https://www.carters.com.au/index.cfm/index/15907-cabinets-type-coin-collectors/
https://www.downies.com/products/antique-cabinet-20-trays-305mm-x-270mm-x-295mm
This article shows coins of a modern-day collector of ancient coins who still used the "round tag" system he'd grown up with:
https://conservatoricoins.com/ex-bcd-collection-bibliography/
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
so that coin had a tag on both sides?
Probably not, but the coin was flipped over while it was living in the cabinet so both sides of the coin were in contact with the tag as various time periods. That's my theory, anyhow.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.