In today's electronic marketplaces, the opportunity to acquire coins without having to travel great distances has never been so great.  Unfortunately, the opportunity for some to fool or cheat the public has also increased dramatically.  One area is in the Rainbow or Toned coins.  If you are a connoisseur of rainbow or toned coins, please read this carefully.

Many of the raw rainbow coins you see on eBay are artificially toned.  To test this, I purchased over 10 raw rainbow coins on eBay from 10 different people.  ALL of them were artificially toned.  I mean of ALL of them.  What do I mean when I say artificially toned.  Many individuals go to great lengths to chemically color coins so that they appear to have gone through the real aging (oxidation) process to create rainbow colors.  Many of these artificially toned coins appear very real, but in fact have been altered.  Some of the coins were actually air brush painted. 

Some manufacturers of artificially toned coins go to great lengths in making these coins by actually using higher grade (MS60-MS63) coins, toning them by chemical alteration processes and then representing them as MS66 or MS67 rainbow toned coins because the colorization process covers many of the bag marks and rubs.  Some manufacturers actually use whizzed coins (a method of polishing the coin to make it appear a higher grade that it is) and then coloring the coin.  Again, the coloring of the coin covers the whizzing and makes it difficult to see that it is an altered coin.

My highest recommendation is to always purchase third party graded coins.  For example, both NGC and PCGS will guarantee that the coin you received is in fact a REAL rainbow toned coin.  If for whatever reason, this turns out not to be the case and the coin is found to be fake, both NGC and PCGS will buy the coin back from you.  This should give everyone additional comfort when buying toned coins.

I hope that this has helped the rainbow and toned coin junkies.  I have been one for years and collect rainbow toned Indian Penny proofs.  Unfortunately, I made the mistake years ago and bought some beautifully toned raw Indian proof cents from a Seller on eBay.  I sent them to a third party grading service to be graded and every one of them came back "artificially toned". 

I am sure that not all the raw rainbow coins you see on eBay are fake.  But unfortunately, the few cause the whole to be suspect.  The question I have always asked myself is:  "If this is a real raw rainbow high grade coin, how come the coin dealer did not send it to NGC or PCGS to be graded because he/she could command a much higher price after it was graded?"

Save yourself a lot of money and headaches.  Unless the seller agrees to give you a full refund and enough time for you to take the coin to a coin dealer to determine if it is real or fake, I would always stay away from Raw Rainbow Toned.

Happy Coin Hunting.....