The Next Product - Verdi-Tone�

The moral debate ... Ask yourself what your goal was when you began the project. Then if you have been successful in completing your goal, call it like it is I say.

I think you set out to preserve coins and possibly remove problems from coins and arrest the problems from getting worse. The toning, I can understand what some might say is artificial toning.
What was your initial plan? I know you well enough Thad, it wasn't to deceive anyone. I think you might have wanted to improve coins that were dipped or cleaned and make them look more natural.

I think if you market your product with what you wanted to do in the first place, go for it, that is your business.
I would just be right up front with what your product is intended for in the advertisement and labeling.

If you don't come up with a product that accomplishes your goal, you can bet eventually somebody else will or at least come close.

Might as well be you.

If the restoration or toning formula and process is so good that is pretty much undetectable by collectors and even top grading services, then whats the difference? I say you conserved a coin and preserved it.

I am sure if I had a weird orange 1909 S VDB that was improperly cleaned and your stuff would make it look almost like it normally should, where's the harm?

Maybe if you are so successful, the Verdi-tone itself will become an accepted and long awaited solution to this very common problem anyway and not be frowned on at all.

It's not like you are putting pretty rainbows on the coins.

I personally, would love to have a product that allows some of the cleaned copper coins I have to be restored back to as close as possible versions of their prior existence. If done well, it would be restoration as I see it. I have never tried the other products out in the market because I don't believe in their results so I am holding onto some wonderful yet off color coins. I for one, look forward to an opportunity to try it out.

I think this sounds interesting. While it seems all serious collectors abhor the cleaning of coins it is inevitable that you run into coins that have been cleaned. These coins are unnatural in color and appearance and the in-discriminant use of cleaners mar an otherwise nice coin. Where I have run into these is when I might pick up a lot of copper coins off ebay for instance and it is obvious that someone did something at some point. To return a coin to its original appearance is no different than the original process that got it darker in the first place. So I say good luck and keep us informed. I will definitely buy some.

People put them in the window to cover up clean marks, why not have a product do it? It's just as immoral ;) haha, but like someone else said - if you can make money off of stuff others are already doing... well why not? On another note, I have some Clad stuff I'd love to test this on for ya. I also have some silver I could help test with too.

I just bought a new lens and would love an excuse to try it out! Let me know if you need any other testers Thad.

I can truly appreciate how difficult this can be to get consistent results. I had some cleaned coins I wanted to try this on. Nothing valuable, but it was copper with that ugly pink color. I tried using a shampoo product for dandruff since it had a sulfate as part of its formula. Not a pure sulfur mind you but I just wanted to see if it would do anything. Anyway after a day it certainly did change! Parts of it did acquire a slightly darker tone to which was much more natural. Problem was it was very inconsistent. there were parts of the coin that had nice color but there were parts with a very defined lineation between the way it was originally and how it was toned with the shampoo. So I can imagine to create a product with consistent results is very hard. Now I don't know if it just because the shampoo had an inconsistent mix itself or whether the coin originally had some imperceptible oil or fingerprints on it that caused this result. I suppose what I need to do is "clean" the coin first with some acetone first. May try this again some time. But just with dandruff shampoo would have an effect in less than a day! end of research.

form what I can understand, this would be a liquid that releases a gas.

I can appreciate the desire to be morally correct in the production of this product. As long as your are up front with everything, then there is no real reason for not making/offering it. You are not dealing with ethical issues such as stealing or murder which can never be seen as morally correct.

The perception of what is morally correct or incorrect in the world of coins fluctuates with time. Think of how it used to be the "right thing to do" to dip a coin. Now it is seen as a terrible thing to do.

Back 30 years ago had someone said they found a DDO coin of which you could only see the DDO features under high magnification, most collectors would have laughed it off and said someone was simply trying to trick people and make a quick buck off of something trivial. However, now these varieties are commonly collected and fun for a lot of people to try to find. The ethics changed - not becoming either more positive or negative - they just changed.