A question for long time dealers/collectors about toned coins

Comments

• llafoe Posts: 7,220 ✭✭

  February 9, 2011 12:50PM

  In the late 1960s/early 1970s they were not desireable by the average collector. Every show I attended/store I visited would dip coins to make them more saleable. I'm amazed there are any "original skinned" coins still available.

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• COALPORTER Posts: 2,900 ✭✭

  February 9, 2011 12:52PM

  I do believe, at one time the ANA grading would not allow a toned coin to be graded MS65 or higher. Sometime, say before 1980, toning was called tarnish and it ment that your coins were screwed !! You did not want it. The worst was album tarnish around the rim. I still think it looks bad and degrades the coin. And then someone came up with the word "toned" to market "tranish" in a new profitable way. There job is to get your money! Most tarished coins I saw were black or dark grey - I dont know where all the bright rainbow colors came from.

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• TomB Posts: 22,093 ✭✭✭✭✭

  February 9, 2011 1:15PM

  I believe there was nearly always a pocket of collectors and dealers who avidly sought out what is considered naturally toned coinage and attempted to preserve this coinage. These coins likely sold at a small premium through this niche, but I doubt very much the premium is as strong as we see today. The coin market also goes through cycles where untoned coins gain favor and lose favor throughout the broader market. These cycles of great favor for untoned coins can last quite a while and many toned coins were dipped during these cycles to make them more liquid. I would even say that in today's market where so many folks love naturally toned coinage that untoned coins are still favored by the majority of collectors. In the 1990s when the toned coin market really started to gel and take the form that it has today in that not only classic coinage is sought after, but modern series are collected as toned coins, too, the premiums were much less stiff. The advent of quality digital photography and access to the internet meant that all could see these nicely toned coins and the competition for attractive pieces exploded. So, if we go back fifteen years ago, the premium was much less than today for wonderfully toned modern series such as WQs, Franklins or Roosevelts. However, I don't think the premium was that much less for classic series such as Barber and Seated coinage.

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• Coinosaurus Posts: 9,645 ✭✭✭✭✭

  February 9, 2011 1:41PM

  
  
  << <i>The advent of quality digital photography and access to the internet meant that all could see these nicely toned coins and the competition for attractive pieces exploded. >>
  
  
  
  I think you are on to something there. And there is no going back from it. Coin collectors were living in a black & white era well into the 2000s. There are still holdouts (the copy of Penny-Wise in front of me is black and white) but they are disappearing. I believe all Whitman books now are full color. And they are doing that on $10 books. Bowers & Merena threw down the gauntlet with the all-color ANA auction catalog in 2003. Someday we may compare that to the Bushnell sale, for elevating catalogue production.
  
  [Please, no comments about the B&M 2003 ANA cataloguing itself - that's beside the point and the topic has been beaten to death already. I am talking about technical production, not tpyos.]

  Newman Numismatic Portal, www.NewmanPortal.org

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