Title: The Addition Of Chemicals To Tone A Coin
Tags: Toning coins
Blog Entry: By adding sulphur and putting it in a warm enviroment, you will acquire toning, no doubt about it. Unfortunatelly, you are accelerating the process of toning and so the coin would produce more than a wavelengh thickness, so the light will be absorbed by the thickness of the film and will not produce the colors of a naturally toned coin. Maybe you'll acquire some gun metal blue, grays and maybe even black. The natural toning pattern on a naturally toned coin (90%) are yellow, magenta, and cyan. No way to acquire this colors by heat or in a short time by adding sulphur or any chemicals to it. By adding anything to the coin, you are over covering its flow lines which gives the coin its luster and so preventing the film layers to redirect light through the coin. If you were to put some ASE's in a cabinet, between wood or what not. What kind of a result will you get? For some reason, if you look around for ASE's, many have toned in a very short period of time. I believe the coin was made with some changes unlike the older coins like Morgans, Peace, Walkers etc... So they tend to tone very easily without adding anything to it. I went to a dealers store the other day, and he had a row of ASE's and they were all toned. They actually got toned just by been under the bright light in the display case, and probably the old wooden cabinet had something to do as well. I have seen many ASE's toned and not one have I seen, that would qualify as a NT one. Although not intentionally toned, they tone so fast that most I've seen have not acquired the nice film layer as Walker or Morgan which were stored in a album, bags or other places for many years preserving its original luster and toning through time slowly. I believe that the flow lines on the ASE's to be less deep so as a result, when it starts to tone, the film layer covers the flow lines faster wich doesn't let it absorb enough light and for that reason, not many nice bight colors come out through the coin. Anyways, this is my opinion. If you read it good. I hope it gives you more ideas. I am no chemist, just a cop who loves toned coins and have studied them for a long time. If you do the experiments, please share it with us so that we can all learn. -Rigo
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