Take A Look At This 1812 Capped Bust Early Half Dollar

I highly doubt this was caused by a mint bag. That doesn't mean that the toning was done in an artificial manner though. It does appear to have a cloth pattern on it, possibly someone wrapped it in a woven cloth for safe keeping and then it got lost to time.

Morgans from the Treasury hoards that sat in bags for decades have toning similar to this. With that being said, that bustie is worth quite a bit more than most Morgans and the seller only has 8 feedbacks and the only info about the coin itself is in the auction title. This coin really should have been slabbed by a top TPG to maximize profit and rule out AT.

Good catch! I thought the same thing about the seller.

I wonder if he has found a way to get artificial toning with a burlap cloth (perhaps soaked in a sulfur solution and then dried) using this to wrap the coin for a few weeks.

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Originally posted by SuperDave

Disclaimer: I'm paranoid by nature.

I don't like the looks of this seller at all. He's sprung, fully formed as it were, from nowhere, selling high-quality coins. Many are spectacular toners, including others with this same both-sided textile toning. Some are keys. His auctions are well-written, and he's a brand-new seller using Turbo Lister. He now has 40 coins up, MS IH's, DMPL Morgans, key Lincolns, most of them toned. A lot of them have suspicious (to me) colors or details going on.

I dunno. He offers a good return policy, but my spider sense is really tingling with this one.

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Originally posted by TypeMaster

I would also think that this seller is an old hand at ebay with a new ID. Probably got himself in trouble with negs on his old ID. Just a guess...

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i suspect this to but either way its still a really nice piece!

TypeMaster - These things SCREAM Coin Doctor to me.

The blue tone is typical of artificial coloration and his other auctions all feature the same color on numerous different types of coins - some circulated some original MS. So to believe that these all just happened to tone the identical way stretches the truth way past breaking. No one has that much luck in finding untreated examples of ONE toning color.

I would bid on these coins to 10%-20% under retail for the grade and then REMOVE the color and redarken them to a more normal appearance.

I have little doubt that this ebay seller is acquiring these artificially toned or doing it himself. If I purchase the coin it will be well under FMV.