Toning

Well the 2004 American Eagles don't tone that fast...

You always see that seller with toned coins because he is a toned coin specialist dealer! He is also an excellent photographer of toned coins and he can visualize colors that can normally be difficult to capture, it is all a matter of lighting and angles. It would also not surpise me that he uses editing software to "juice" the photos a bit, I have done the same thing when trying to make a photo replicate what a coin can look like in-hand under strong light. Toning is best seen with a coin in-hand because the colors can refract at numerous angles that you cannot possibly capture with a 2D photograph. The NGC photos are for detail, they did not set up to capture toning so that is why you cannot see it.



Sure they can, .999 silver can tone quite easily. If it was a clad coin looking like that, I would be very suspicious. I keep my SAEs in a Littleton album and it has toned a few of the mid-late 2000s. The toning is quite random though, one hole will tone a coin while the one next to it will have little to no toning.