Most coin silver is 90% silver and 10% copper. When coins have been open to the air or contained in books or paper, the coin can and will tone, just like Grandmother's good silverware or tea set.

I once purchased over 3,000 silver dollars that had been stored in an old dynamite box and every coin was from a dark blue to gold, green, purple, red, orange, black, and every combination including coal black. It was caused by oxidation of the coins by the gases contained in the wood.

Another thing that will tone coins is storing them in cardboard books, like the Blue Whitman $2.50 Coin Books, where you press the coin into the slightly smaller opening. Paper and cardboard are made by breaking down the wood by using acid. The acid is neutralized by adding sulfur to the mixture near the end of the process, so there is minute amounts of sulfur gases left in the finished book.

Now the humidity in the air or if the coin book gets wet, it releases these gases and depending on the contaminates in the air, the coins can turn into all sorts of colors on both sides.

Over the last 40 years, I have purchased thousands of rolls of silver dollars in their original paper bank rolls and in almost every case the two end coins that were opened to the air were toned, some in rainbow colors, some dark gold or even black.

Coins coming from highly polluted atmospheres like Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, or the South where they also have very high humidity rates also tone rapidly.

Many people and especially new dealers think this toning devalues the coins and dip them with silver dip to make them white again. Many experienced collectors would rather have toned coins than dipped or cleaned coins.

Most dealers collect nice examples for their own collections. I personally have over 400 toned coins in my collection and I buy every nicely toned coin I run into and if it's better than the one I have in my collection, I upgrade it and put the one I removed up for sale.

Toned and frosted proof like coins are one in a thousand and each one is truly unique unto itself. In other words, it's the only one like it in the world. Of course it takes a special kind of buyer or collector to recognize this, but if you watch our silver dollar list, you will see them disappear one or two a day.

Every day I spend an hour or more on the phone with other dealers buying coins and I always ask, "Do you have any toned Morgans you want to sell?"

All the dealers know my favorite coins. First - Proof Like Morgans, then Toned Morgans, then Frosted Coins. Not because they have any more profit in them, but because they are the prettiest and the rarest. To me they are the "Cream of the Morgan Crop".

One of the advantages of buying toned or discolored coins is you know they haven't been whizzed (harshly cleaned) or dipped. Most smart collectors like original coins for their collections.

The summer of 1980 is when I purchased the dynamite case 1/2 full of Morgan Dollars that were deeply toned. We had rented a booth at the Jack Tar Hotel for the Fall Coin Show. I picked out 500 of the prettiest toned coins and put the rest in a couple of plastic 3 gallon buckets. We had a line of folks at the buckets for 3 nights and 2 days of the show. We took in over $100,000.00 at the San Francisco show and it was the best show we ever did. Interestingly enough 90% of our business was with other coin dealers buying for clients and their personal collections.

I learned a very valuable lesson that year and I have never forgotten it. Americans are individualists and coin collectors more so than most.

Many of the new coin dealers on the block only want to purchase white coins or slab coins. This is mainly because they only deal with Wall street Type Investors and haven't had many years of seasoning in the business. Many on the Web are only part-time dealers, this type of dealer is called a "Vest Pocket Dealer" and we do a fair amount of business with them. We don't require a dealer to have a Store Front to deal with him, but his checks have to be good. Many new dealers work at jobs or on the Web until they build their customer base and learn the trade well enough to make some money and open a Store Front. Nothing wrong with this, I was a coin collector 20 years before I opened Washington Square Coin Exchange in 1980 and I am still selling coins I bought when I was a collector.

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