The Unvarnished Truth About "Toning" ... My Opinion Fwiw

The plain and simple truth is, that "toning" on a silver coin is the first stage of corrosion, as surely as "hay is the first stage of horse manure".

There are many here, more educated then I am on the scientific side of this issue, but as attractive as it can be on a nice original coin, I am left wondering if the process of deterioration can be arrested.

Toning becomes tarnish, tarnish becomes corrosion.

That said, there are times when you get a coin that's been dipped and stripped ... usually from one of these hucksters calling themselves "this or that whatever mint" or "historical society". Most serious collectors will shy away from these offerings, and I try to,but sometimes the price is just too compelling for me to pass up the deal. I picked up a set in a wooden case a couple years ago that contained 10 90 percent silver half dollars. The coins ended up costing just under10 dollars each ... but what had been done to them was a travesty. Sometimes the coins are polished .. but in this case they were just dipped and stripped of any and all patina. My reasoning was that they would return to a more natural appearance in time. Well, I decided that I wouldn't live that long, and decided to accelerate the process.

Unless you are in a position such as the one outlined above, I don't recommend altering a coin's appearance. I am not selling the coins,and if I ever do, the AT will be pointed out. But I learned some things along the way that I thought I could share. Experience is the best teacher. Most are not going to be faced with the need to do this, so for those, I thought it might be entertaining, and maybe even educational.

It's well known that exposure to sulphur dioxide is what causes silver to tarnish, so I needed a way to "make some".
It stinks to high heaven, and you can't do this in your house, especially if you are married.

I went to Walmart pharmacy, and asked them if I could buy sulphur, like you used to get in a chemistry set (if you're an oldster like me), and once I explained what it was I was doing, and they were satisfied that I wasn't manufacturing gun powder, they sold me a small plastic screw top container of "flowers of sulphur" ... just powdered sulphur.

To make the gas, I used an oil filled electric radiator turned up on the highest setting. To keep from simply filling the room with the gas ... which is going to happen anyway ... but to try and contain it and concentrate it, I used a small piece of copper that would span the ribs of the heater, and used a screw top from a half dollar tube as a pedestal to sit the coin on. I used a bakelite ash try. flipped upside down, to capture and concentrate the gas in a small space. Initially I was just setting it on the pedestal, but the going was too slow. The ashtray really made a big difference in the amount of time needed to impart the desired effect to the coins.

I should have taken "before" pictures ... but Ihave found that, in my experience, that usually means there's no "after".

I'll add some pictures of a few of the coins later on tonight. I locked them up in the safe last night, and they're actually in another building right now. My computer is running some kind of background program, and the freezing is annoying, but I needed to get this published before I can restart the computer.

I'm running some non coin related auctions tonight, and will be using the camera, and while I still suck at getting the kind of images that I really need to ... I'll do the best I can to take some pictures to illustrate the results.

Chance