Morgan Rainbows?

some are natural and some are not, it takes a little studying to be able to distinguish which is which, but you can guarantee when something makes the price jump that much if it has it man will find a way to try and fool the public and sometimes they do a pretty good job and sometimes they do a real poor job but you have to train yourself to know which one you are looking at

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There is no guarantee of being able to tell the difference at all, any more. Toning is a simple chemical process which can be made to look just the same, done overnight, as it does if it took 100 years to happen. There are coin cooks out there whose work is indistinguishable from the real thing. All the major TPG's have been victimized by this, some more spectacularly than others.

For these reasons, I can no longer recommend that a premium be paid for a toned coin unless its' provenance is absolutely known.

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Ah SuperDave, I must disagree with you on this one. Natural toning on Morgans have several telltale traits that the coin docs simply cannot replicate. Most of the recent bruhaha has been over 1921 and 1922 Peace dollars, and any blue Indian cent. Those need to be viewed with extreme caution, but not so with Morgans.
On Morgan dollars............
Coin docs cannot create emerald green. Period.
They cannot create the shadowing effect found around devices like the stars, and the intricate color changes as found in the hair are impossible for them to replicate. Instead, artificial toning crawls over the devices seemingly without interuption......just as you would imagine a liquid applied to a tilted coin would do.
Textile toning is not possible to replicate.
That funky purple color is a telltale of AT, especially when it shows up in a rainbow band. That 'purple' is never found on a real coin. Morgans can tone a natural purple color, but it is not that intense artificial shade.
If you look at enough of them, it really does start to become fairly obvious. When I consider a coin, if there is any doubt at all my rule is to pass.

I hope most of you realize that artificially toning coins is only a very small part of a coin doctors day. They make a heck of a lot more money adding artificial frost, thumbing cheeks, moving metal, lasering imperfections, changing mintmarks, etc to get coins that elusive grade or condition. Like it or not, they encompass most areas of our hobby and education about them and what they are capable of is the key to avoiding their work. JMHO.

AT examples






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I will defer to your superior knowledge of the subject to an extent, hadleydog. I agree, so far nobody's been able to exactly duplicate the emerald green (on a Morgan - as you know, MrSpud has done it with a nickel) or come very close to the proper banding progression. I doubt it'll be much longer, though. Textile toning is equally unknown as AT, but I'll bet that won't last long either.

My desk tones coins which I leave to lay on them. Occasionally, one comes up with the shadow toning you've described. I can't support that as an accurate telltale.

So, I have to defer to the paranoid viewpoint on this topic when answering the questions of someone who is not an expert - attributing the authenticity of toning is not for the inexpert - I'm certainly incapable of it - and I can't in good conscience encourage anyone, at this point in time, to start learning about toners from scratch without close contact with you or someone else from TCCS.

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Textile toning is not possible to replicate

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Hadley,

I don't challenge your expertise in this area--you have thought about this far more than I am ever likely to. But I wonder, how you can be so sure? These people are very resourceful.

I suspect that if one were to soak a coarse fabric--preferably an authentic mint bag--with AT solution and experiment with drying methods, a realistic product could be created.

Here's another naturally toned textile coin.
You guys starting to see the difference?
Natural Textile




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Just for curiousity, what is the scientific reason that emerald green cannot be AT? I'm assuming this will lead to some chemistry-talk, which I'll *try* to assimilate...

Very nice Pilgrim, okie-colin. From what I can tell from the picture, the toning is not only natural but really enhances the coin. I really like it!
Tights24, the purple I am refering to is the stuff on Susan B Anthony's nose. The color bands on the AT coins from top to bottom go yellow/purple/metallic blue. The NT banded coin I posted goes green/red/yellow/sky blue. Here's a better shot of the color on the coin you are wondering about, the pic I posted was better at showing the textile.



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