Ep. 4 Monster Toned Morgan Dollars with Jacob Matiyevsky
But in the case of these coins you're talking about, these are coins that have reacted with their environment and produced kind of all various colors of the rainbow. Correct?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. Absolutely. So if if any of your listeners have ever left out, like, a silver spoon for a long time, you'll notice after a few months, that spoon will start to tone. It'll have these like oil slick colors developing on it, and that's just a natural process that happens with certain precious metals like silver.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Alright. Today on the Cabbage Coins podcast, we have a special episode. We are talking about Toned Morgan dollars. I have a guest, Jacob Matievskiy. Jacob leads or is the owner operator of a company called Monster Tone Morgans.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Jacob, welcome to the Cabbage Coins podcast. Introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about your business and what you got what got you into coins.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Thanks, Tony, for for having me on. Yeah. My my name is Jacob. I specialize in rainbow toned Morgan dollars. That's my bread and butter.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So I buy and sell all kinds of different beautifully toned coins from all sorts of ranges, from the lower end entry level pieces to the really top of the line examples.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Awesome. So what really got you into coins initially? And did you get started with tone coins or colorful coins? Or kind of what was the progression from lower starting with coins and getting into these these crazy colorful, super pricey, you know, crazy colorful Morgans?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. Sort of. So I didn't exactly start with toned coins. I started when I was nine years old or so collecting the state quarters, actually, with my grandmother. We both she got us two albums, and we would help each other complete both of the albums as we would just look for coins in our change.
Jacob Matiyevsky:And that's really what got me introduced to coins a little bit. And then a couple years later, I discovered coin roll hunting where you could go and look through rolls of coins from the bank and try to find coins that were valuable or or made out of silver. And started doing that a little bit. And eventually found a few things and started thinking about, okay, do I keep these? Do I sell these?
Jacob Matiyevsky:What do I do? So I ended up joining a couple of Facebook groups
Tony Gryckiewicz:Mhmm.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Where you could buy, sell, and coins. That was really cool. I didn't even know these communities existed before that. But one day, somebody posted a picture of a toned Morgan dollar. And as soon as I saw that, that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, and I've pretty much done that ever since.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. And toned Morgans, we're gonna show a lot of examples of it, but we're just kinda, like, dipping our feet here into the water. So when we talk about tone Morgans, we're talking about, a silver dollar that that has changed in terms of the color on the surface of the coin. There's been a reaction of the silver with some environmental kinda components. And and silver normally tarnishes or tones, and it can turn kind of a darker, darker color.
Tony Gryckiewicz:But in the case of these coins you're talking about, these are coins that have, reacted with their environment and produced kind of all various colors of the rainbow. Correct?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. Absolutely. So if if any of your listeners have ever left out, like, a silver spoon for a long time, you'll notice after after a few months, that spoon will start to tone. It'll have these, like, oil slick colors developing on it, and that's just a natural process that happens with certain precious metals like silver.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Gotcha. Okay. So we're gonna talk a lot about Morgan dollars in this episode. So I think it'd be sense to give a a short little history about what the Morgan dollar is, why it was created, and why it's significant. I'm gonna try to speed through this fairly quickly.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So, The United States had a silver dollar for, a number of years between 1840 eighteen seventy two or three. I I can't remember when the ceded dollar ended, but it was called the liberty ceded dollar. It was a silver dollar that we used mostly for, exchange and and commerce within the country, but also for, foreign exchange or, I should say, to support our interests in foreign trade over in Asia. It had a good solid run. And then in 1873, congress decided to demonetize silver.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So no longer were they going to create money for the country in silver coins, and they called this the crime of '73. And a lot of the silver mining businesses, you know, obviously, were an uproar and had a real problem with this. And the silver mining business and industry had lobbies within Washington. And in 1878, I believe, I have to check my dates, but, congress passed a new act, called the Bland Allison Act. And in in this Bland Allison Act, they agreed to purchase a vast, vast quantity of silver.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And, as part of the act part of the law, they had to coin that into silver dollars. Now the problem was is that The US economy didn't really need many silver dollars. There wasn't a lot of demand for silver dollars. And a lot of the economy, especially in the East, they prefer paper currency. So they mostly traded in paper, not so much need for, like, hard, you know, silver or or gold necessarily, coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So there wasn't a whole lot of demand for these silver dollars. So what ended up happening is that they essentially wound up in US treasury vaults, and they're put into these kind of burlap sacks and thousand coin sacks, and they were stashed away into the vaults. And we have this great little picture here to show folks. Okay. And so they put away all of these sacks of Morgan dollars into treasury vaults.
Tony Gryckiewicz:They were a thousand coins per bag. Now they did Jacob, did something special with the coins when they went into these bags in order to prevent them from getting, I guess, I don't know, torn apart by rodents and things. Right? And that kind of affected what ultimately created this kind of wild colorful tone. Give us tell me a little bit more about this process here and what happened with the coins.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah, that's exactly right, Tony. So they, they they minted over all the years, they minted something like six sixty over six sixty million Morgans, so many of those, you mentioned, were just never used. And so they sat in these vaults for for decades and decades on end. Now what they had done is the burlap material that the bags were made of, they had, soaked it in sulfur in order to keep rats out. And it was not a lot, but just enough that that sulfur over a long period of time started to leach out of the cloth material and started to actually be deposited in a really thin layer on the surface of the coins that were on the outside of the bag.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So when that sulfur got deposited on those coins it reacted with the surface of the silver and formed a compound that we call silver sulfide.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Silver sulfide.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Mhmm. Exactly. What that is is basically a semi translucent layer, very thin on the surface of the coin that reflects light a lot like a prism. So that image you have pulled up there is a little diagram of this. So the bottom little stripe of silver, that's your silver coin.
Jacob Matiyevsky:On top of that, there's that thin silver sulfide layer. I Mhmm. I made this diagram many years ago when I wrote my article, but on on toned coins. But if I were to redo it, I would actually make that color layer a different thickness. So it would be thinnest over on the left where you have those light colors like peach and blue, and thickest over on the right where you have the darker hues.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So because of the varying thickness of that silver sulfide layer, it reflects light differently. And so that's why we see different colors when we look at the coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Interesting. So was the buildup of the silver sulfide different concentrations in different parts of the sack? You know? I mean, you know, because there was gravity involved, and there would be they were just soaking them in salt in sulfur. Is there any science to that at all?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Or was the buildup of of sulfur sulfide due to, you know, in different quantities due to a different factor?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Actually, that's a great question. So it had to do a lot with a variety of things including the angle of the coin in the bag Okay. And the airflow going through the bag onto the coin. Not you don't need a lot of it. But if you have enough, depending on how that coin's angled and sitting in that bag, you're gonna get parts of it that will get more air, parts of it that will get less.
Jacob Matiyevsky:There's also things like a different coin being in the way, which could affect how much of that silver sulfide is forming. Humidity has a factor as well. There's a a few different conditions, but mainly airflow and then the angle that the coin is.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Interesting. So I I don't wanna wait too long here to show all of our viewer viewers what an example of what these is gonna be, but it's safe to say that for some of these examples we have, we have some incredible kind of exceptional pieces to talk about. Not all of them that are in the market, you know, look like this per se, but, these are gonna be great examples for us to get into what everybody's whistle, so to speak, on, Tony Morgans and Cullifan Morgans. And we're gonna talk specifically about what makes these desirable to collectors, and we're gonna try to break it down in terms of color and vibrancy and location or or pattern on the coin in terms of of value and and what the collectors demand. So pause to go pull this up.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So pulled up a 1882. I'm assuming this is a San Francisco coin, 1882 San Francisco. Those are known for being very vibrant in terms of just basic luster. But here's a an example of a monster tone Morgan, and it has all of these different various colors of the rainbow.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So walk me through what we're looking at here, and let's talk about, what are the components that, you know, are desirable from a collector perspective about this coin And maybe give us a little bit of a range of of value in today's market.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So this one this example you have here is really exceptional. There's a range of toned Morgan dollars. You can have some that have just a small little bit of color or very light pastel y color. And then very rarely will you get something like this, which is absolutely spectacular and has bright bold colors over the entire surface. So there's a variety of factors really that contribute to the value of a toned coin, but I would say the number one is going to be the specific colors that you have.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So Mhmm. Those really bright vibrant colors like the bright reds, fuchsias, blues, greens that you see a lot of on this coin, those tend to be the most striking. And so a lot of collectors
Tony Gryckiewicz:Sure.
Jacob Matiyevsky:That's what they prefer. Also, the intensity is probably the number two factor when it comes to toned coins. So you can have can have two different coins. One that's toned green, another one that's toned green. But if one of them has intense luster and pop to those colors, that's gonna be way more valuable than the exact same coin with muted or dull luster.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So and and for for your listeners who maybe are newer to coins, luster is what we refer to as when you twirl a coin around, the shine that it gives off. Kinda like Yeah. If you're looking at your silverware again, it might look dull or it might look really shiny. That shiny look is what we what we like to have for toned coins as well. Then Yeah.
Jacob Matiyevsky:You get into all sorts of other factors. So interesting patterns. This coin actually has something like that in it. It has if you notice those little dots that are running all along the face of the coin Mhmm. Over the portrait, those are what's known as textile, and that's actually an imprint from the cloth material of the bag that this coin toned in, which is really cool.
Jacob Matiyevsky:It's cool to see Yeah. How a tone how a coin actually developed, and you can see it right there. It shows the imprint. There's a few other things. Grade surface preservation is very important too.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Sure. But I would say those are the main factors.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Are there different are different colors more valuable? I I've heard that greens are diff typically a much more difficult color to find on on on these. A, why is that? And b, is it true that, you know, there's different value for a coin that has a lot of blue on it or red or or green or whatever?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Absolutely. So green, red fuchsia, and kind of a blue cyan color, which is very much what you see on this coin on
Tony Gryckiewicz:the left
Jacob Matiyevsky:hand side, those tend to be the most valuable. Orange as well. Pumpkin orange is quite rare. And the reason why is these not only are very striking visually. Like, you're just thinking about a piece of art, if it has these really bright colors, it's gonna stop you and and make you think about it, make you look at it.
Jacob Matiyevsky:But the other reason is some of these colors represent very thin bands on that color spectrum that we were looking Okay. At earlier, where you have that light peach, blue, yellow, orange going on into these other colors. So a color like cyan, which is a mixture of blue and green, it's a very, very thin band on that color spectrum. So it's very rare that you get
Tony Gryckiewicz:much of
Jacob Matiyevsky:it in quantity.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So just to kinda reiterate or or so we're talking about this layer of of silver sulfide that's developing on this coin. And depending on the size of the layer and maybe some other factors, but specifically the size of the layer, you're gonna get a different color on the coin. And so if there are certain colors that are associated with a a size of that layer that is only of a certain level, like getting that color is rare because it either is before that that band or it's after that band typically. And so if it's if you're kind of right in the middle, it's kind of a rare color to get on a coin.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Is that is that accurate? Exactly right, Tony. Yep.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. The thing I love about this coin definitely is the textile, across the face. It is this, like, marker or the history because, yeah, these things sat in vaults for years starting in, like, the eighteen seventies, and then all the way up until the nineteen sixties is when a lot of these came out of the vaults, when we completely demonetized silver again in our coinage and people, collectors, and dealers, and whatever went up to banks, and they bought large bags of these.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And then they started to sell them out to the public and so forth, and people started collecting coins and collecting Morgan dollars. And then we found these things, you know, so eight decades of silver and sulfide combining with other factors in the moisture of the air and then air circulation within the vaults created these things. So, I'll move on to the next one. So this is another really spectacular coin I noticed. One of the things I noticed right away is that the, we got this incredible level of, like, red or or I I guess this is a magenta as as I mentioned last time.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I'm color blind, so, like, this is not really my forte, but I do have an appreciation for, a lot of these, these colorful coin toned coins. But this one, maybe talk to us a little bit about the factors on this particular coin that, make it valuable, give us an idea of, oh, we didn't talk about the the last one in terms of just a range here of approximate market value because this is an $18.82 s what was the what's the grade? MS 66 or something?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. This one's a mint state 66. Okay. So roughly yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So if this is just a regular plain white, we call white plain silver coin, this would be about a $400 coin roughly. With the toning, with the spectacular rainbow color on this coin, give us a range about about what the market would pay for something like this today.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So this coin and what you don't quite see in the photo is the intensity of the color. It is really Mhmm. Jaw dropping when you look at it in person. So this is a coin that would probably bring between 20 and 25,000 in today's market.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Wow. That is intense. And just to give an idea, what is the highest record price? I don't if you know this off the top of your head, and that's okay. We can look it up.
Tony Gryckiewicz:What is the I need an assistant. I tell look up to look up stuff. But what is the highest auction record for a a tone Morgan dollar?
Jacob Matiyevsky:So the highest auction record for one is 61,000. For a beautifully toned example, it happened to also be toned on both sides and was a very, very high grade. However, there are a couple of private sales that actually exceed that and not necessarily for higher graded coins either.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I I do recall one of the very first World's Fair monies I attended was in 2018. I think it was in Denver.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I can't remember. It was the year 2017 or 2018. I I can put a note later. But they had, I think, that one on display. That one that was that went for $60,000.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I think they had it on this display possibly. When was the year? Do you remember when that was?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Oh, I wanna say I wanna say 2016 or so. So this would have '17.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. So then that I guess that would have corresponded. Because I remember they had the auction record listed right next to the coin. It was spectacular and yeah. Anyways so okay.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So that's kind of the high watermark, man. And that's, like, ten years ago pretty much. I mean, the market has evolved. The market has increased on so many coins, especially in 2021, 2022. The market for rare coins has really surged.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So, interesting. Interesting. I wonder what, you know, what what new records are we're gonna break on on some is is some of those coins, I'm assuming, just haven't come back to market. Is that right?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. So what what tends to happen with a lot of the best of the best is they are purchased by a collector, and that collector, knowing its rarity, keeps it for a very, very long time, and it really doesn't come back on the market until perhaps many decades later. Sometimes they do recirculate, but it's it's not often at that level.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Gotcha. Okay. So this one the grade on this one, what are we looking at grade wise for this 1881 s?
Jacob Matiyevsky:So this one's a mid state 65.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So this is a 65. Probably would have suggested that given we have these marks right on the focal area. We're gonna talk about this and some of these other coins. When we talk about focal areas, especially the Morgan dollar, it has to do with, the the the grading, the numerical grading of the coin for our for terms of preservation and quality of the coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So, in this particular example, the focal area of a Morgan dollar is gonna be the center cheek as well as right in front of the eyes. It's basically when you look at the coin, it's where your eyes go when you look at the coin. That becomes a focal area. Interesting tidbit I learned at the advanced grading class is that the focal area on a $5 Indian, I don't know if you know this, but a $5 Indian, the focal area is actually on the reverse right behind the eagle. The feeler behind the eagle.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's interesting. I can Throw one up on the video here to to showcase that. But, anyways so, anyways, so the focal area on Morgan dollars is gonna be the cheek as well as right in front of the the eyes here of Lady Liberty. By the way, this is a Morgan dollar, but this is not an image of Morgan. This is actually Lady Liberty.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is the allegorical image created by Charles Morgan of Liberty, the allegorical figure, Lady Liberty. And so this was designed by Charles Morgan, but right in front of the face of Liberty is gonna be one of the focal areas as well as the cheek. So super important when it comes to grading, but then also the color aspect that I I guess I've I've learned. So this particular example compared to the previous one, what are we looking at in terms of this is a mint state 65. So one numerical grade lower from a technical perspective.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is about a $350 coin or so rough roughly maybe less than that. What do we look at in terms of the approximate kind of range of value on something like this one, given all the colors and how well placed they are and so forth?
Jacob Matiyevsky:This one would fall right in that $15,000 range. And the reason why on this particular coin is you do have a lot of those really bright colors. You have that neon green in there, that fuchsia, even some orange down near the date. But you also do get some deeper colors. So you get that magenta purple color, even some teal up near the top.
Jacob Matiyevsky:And although those are beautiful colors, they're not quite as striking, especially in in person when you look at the coin, as some of those bright greens. So although this coin is still beautiful, it's not quite as vivid and bright as the other one, at least when you look at the two in person. And so that's kind of the dis the difference in value that you get there. Still a very, very expensive coin, though.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Gotcha. Alright. Let's move on to the next one here. So this is a a one that I do not like. I can tell you right away.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I'm not Yes. An expert in this stuff, but what is wrong with this coin?
Jacob Matiyevsky:So in any conversation about tone Morgans, unfortunately, you do have to talk about the ones that are artificially toned. So because of the value that the toning adds, like you mentioned, some of these coins we looked at earlier are $3,400 coins, add the toning in, and it's a 5 figure piece. Yeah. So a lot of some people have started trying to replicate the toning artificially. So not allowing those coins to sit for eighty years in a sweaty bank vault, but actually trying to accelerate that process using often a sulfur gas.
Jacob Matiyevsky:There's some people try to bake the coins in an oven or put them seal them up with eggs, I've heard. Okay. It's another another thing that people have done. But, essentially, it's not considered desirable or acceptable in the market because it is not a piece of mother nature's art. It's something that somebody tried to do to fake it Yeah.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Essentially.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Trying to fabricate this look.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. Exactly. On this coin, you can see that the the colors are are wrong. If you've looked at a lot of toned coins, these colors don't match the ones that you would typically see on a naturally bag toned Morgan dollar. There are you'll notice, for example, near the crescents, the two half moons that you see on it, which what somebody tried to do, this is something that happens a lot in mint bag toning, is there's another coin sitting on top of of a different coin, and that blocks some of that toning from happening.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So somebody tried to replicate that, but the colors are not right there. So if we Mhmm. Remember back to that color spectrum we looked at, the bands that you should see in those areas where just a little bit of color was able to get in, just a little bit of silver sulfide was able to form, it should be a light peach, then a very light powder blue, then a thin band of of violet, and then yellow. On this coin, you don't see that at all. You see kind of a blend of a band of black, and then you get purple, and then blue.
Jacob Matiyevsky:It's it's the completely wrong order.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. It's the opposite. Right? Because black would be the final color. Right?
Tony Gryckiewicz:That's kinda the terminal toning?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Exactly. Right. So Yeah. The other thing you see on this coin is if you look at the stars especially on the left hand side, it kinda looks like the stars are not even there. The color's just flowing right over them.
Jacob Matiyevsky:But on a Morgan dollar, those stars are raised. And the way that this reaction occurred on naturally toned coins, those are typically not going to be the same color as the surrounding surfaces. So if we look back even, yeah, one of these examples, you'll notice that the stars are not the exact same blue, and the colors are actually blending very differently as opposed to that artificial coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what we have is folks people that are yeah, I mean, anytime there's a profit opportunity, every time there's you know, a market has an opportunity to, you know, you can make a a considerable profit on these, the these toners. You have folks that try to replicate, fabricate, fake it, whatever.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And this is the case through the the history of collectibles, the history of coins, and and so on and so forth. But what we have here is we have people that are attempting to accelerate a process that occurred naturally over eight decades within treasury vaults. They're trying to accelerate that process within a very short period of time using methods to try to create a similar type of design on a coin through, you know, these kind of these these these, I don't know, tricks, whatever you wanna call them, baking them in the oven and throwing them into frying pans with some some sulfur and some eggs and whatever. I mean, it's interesting the fact that people spend time doing this kind of stuff, but they're trying to fool the grading companies and try and get them into a real holders. And this is probably the biggest, the best pitch for why to work with somebody like Jacob because Jacob is an expert in what's what is you know real toning versus artificial toning.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And getting the expert opinion about that is super important from from preserving your investment. I imagine.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. Absolutely. I mean the the biggest thing really that you can do, I always recommend it to anybody even if you are working with a dealer, is to still educate yourself. Look at many examples of naturally toned coins as you can. Learn about the process.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Learn what to look for. Because although it's very rare, it is possible for some of these coins to get by even even the best eyes. So if you educate yourself
Tony Gryckiewicz:about it Yeah.
Jacob Matiyevsky:That's that's really gonna be the number one thing. If you're if you're looking to get in into this market in a serious way, it's it's definitely important.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Let's move on to the next one. So I really like this one. We also, again, have a lot of the different colors of the rainbow. I see this magenta. I see this this great green right here.
Tony Gryckiewicz:We have now this this coin cannot be graded higher than well, don't know. You got some you got some decent fields, but the cheek is pretty pretty ticky. There's a of tick mark, on the chin. I'm guessing this is maybe a 64 plus or a 65. What is this?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. I I believe it's a mid say 65.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oh, it is a 65. Okay. I think they probably gave it a 65 because the fields are actually fairly clean. This cheek, I I think all of all of these marks are kind of in more right in this area, you would have had to limit it to a 64. But anyways, this isn't about grading.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So this particular one, anything that you wanna point out about this example, give us an idea of kind of the the range here of value, but anything instructional educational about this particular pattern.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So this one is a nice contrast to the two coins that we looked at at the beginning where this one has what's called satiny luster, which is another type of luster that you'll get very often on Morgan dollars. Typically, the mid eighteen mid to late eighteen eighties, and the Philadelphia mint coins will have a lot of that appearance. New Orleans mint coins as well. So those earlier coins we saw, they were very flashy. This one, when you look at it in person, it's it's very velvety, almost like a big tub of of sorbet, and you could go in there with an ice cream scoop and pick out that get a big scoop of that color.
Jacob Matiyevsky:That's kind of the effect that you get on this coin. So it's just a different look. T typically tends not to bring as much as the really flashy appearance. But this one still has beautiful color. It has very vibrant green fuchsia golds in there.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So this is something that would bring around 5,000 or so in today's market.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Yeah. That's not that's not too bad. That's not too bad. It kind of is very similar to a coin that I want to own.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It was a $18.78, Carson City Morgan. It was an MS 64 plus with a CAC sticker, and it had toning that looked just like this one. And I think ultimately the market where it landed was right around that $5,000 range. I sold it really early in my kinda quote, unquote career back when this was just a side hustle for me. Probably too cheap, and, I know the coin resold for around that figure.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So that that makes sense. I think you're I think you're you're you're spot on. Let's move on to this one. So what tell me what's unique about this particular example. Because we got a lot of colors here, but I feel like this is very muted and there's not a lot of luster.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. Absolutely. So this is an example of where the grade of a coin is somewhat secondary to the visual appearance of it. So this is a coin that's actually graded very high. It's a min state 67.
Jacob Matiyevsky:It's the highest graded one that we've seen so far. However and it even has some of that green color that we talked about is is very desirable. Mhmm. But if you notice, the focal area of the coin where Yeah. Right in front of the face is actually much darker.
Jacob Matiyevsky:It's toned to that darker purple color.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Because that's the focal area, the value of this coin is significantly less than if the colors were flipped and the green was there, and the darker purple was somewhere behind the portrait of liberty. Market value on something like this is more like 3,504,000 rather than what we saw earlier.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Interesting. Very interesting. I wanna keep moving here for the sake of time because I know we got this one coming up, which is I when I first saw this coin, I thought this was artificial toning because of how, like, wild it was because a lot of artificial tone Morgans kinda have really splotchy kinda wildish things happening on the on the coin. But this is completely real. This is completely natural.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And we have just walk us walk us through this one. We got a lot of green, which green is green is good, but we also have this incredible display of color happening right in the key focal area right in front of the eyes of of Lady Liberty. So tell us a little bit about this one. And and again, kind of a a rough idea of of value here.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Sure. So this one, it is very striking. The colors are very, very bright neon. And at first glance, it might look almost like it's an artificial coin because the colors tend most of the time not to look that bright. However, what we can see on this one is it actually does have the right colors and the right progression if we look particularly in that focal area.
Jacob Matiyevsky:The other thing that it has is that really crazy wild pattern. And what that is is not only do we see those dots that we talked about is the textile pattern from the burlap bags. We also have a bunch of these twists and turns almost like a piece of string that's threaded together. And in fact, that is actually the string. That is the string from the seam of the bank bag where it was sewn together.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Wow. It actually got imprinted onto this coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. That is just wild. So talk about, you know, piece of piece of history. I feel like it's another one of these expressions that's way overused as we when we sell when we sell coins, when we talk about coins and and so forth is calling everything a piece of history, but, you know, they they are. But talk about something that has a real history behind it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You can think about this coin sitting up against a seam in the bag and having a particular thread that is reacting with the with with the surface of of the coin. And what's cool is how this color, this yellow, I guess, orangish yellowish color is right kinda coming into the eyes of Lady Liberty. So I feel like it's like almost like, inspiration from the heavens kind of thing happening. I think it's pretty cool. And then, of course, you have this huge amount of green, which is really important.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Actually, well, you have two different shades of green. Right? You got green across the face here, and then you have this kind of more or would this be a more of a neon green back here?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yeah. You have a little bit of neon green in that area where you were pointing out. A little bit of a more muted green over the cheek, and you have some shades of cyan, little bit of blue. You have some blue and purple by the date Got it. As well.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So, yeah, it really does have a lot
Tony Gryckiewicz:of I'm just curious. What is the what is the mint mark on this? Is this a Philadelphia or an or New Orleans?
Jacob Matiyevsky:This is a New Orleans.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because for those who don't know, the $18.84 s is a extreme rarity within especially within mid state grades, and it's an extremely expensive expensive coin. So if you had one that had, like, this kind of color on it, I don't know.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I mean, it would just break the stratosphere Set of
Jacob Matiyevsky:a record without a doubt.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. The competition. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. So we give us an idea here of a rough band of of value on this particular one in today's marketplace.
Jacob Matiyevsky:So this one would fall right around the 15 to maybe $20,000 range value wise. Now a lot of that has to do with the luster quality. Because it's a New Orleans mint, the luster is more of that satiny velvety look versus the really shiny, lustrous esth mint. If this were an esth mint coin, the value could potentially even be double that.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. I I was just I was just thinking around 30,000 or so. If you had the luster, like that first one that we had going all the way back to our beginning here, this the luster of this coin, you can just even tell from the image is just off the charts. So if you had the luster of this one combined with the the color spectrum and what's going on in this one, I could see it being a $30,000 coin. Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Absolutely. For sure. Let's talk about this guy. So this is a very, very interesting piece. This is a reverse toner.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So the this is the reverse of the Morgan dollar with the eagle on the reverse. We got a lot of cool things going on. I'll give you you the floor here to talk us through this one and give us an idea of of value here. But this is also your example of a lower graded coin. Is that right?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Yes. So there's a few different things that do impact the value of the coin. We we talked about in part the surface preservation, and typically a lower graded coin with rougher surfaces is not going to command as much value as something that's really clean because it's it's a lot rare to find a coin that's very clean with toning as well than it is to find a coin that's much more beat up because a lot of coins were in the bag. So the obverse of this coin is very, very rough. It's only graded a mint state 63.
Jacob Matiyevsky:However, what's special about this coin is it's just absolutely stunning visually. It has really, really bright, intense greens, blues, and fuchsia. It has a ton of luster which you can even in the photo you can see, but it's Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You can
Jacob Matiyevsky:see even more dynamic in person. And it has a really really cool pattern with that burlap textile that we can see on the on the eagle and all over the wings even in the fields as well. So Yeah. It's kind of a an example of the exception to the rule where typically a lower grade may not bring as much, but in this case it's it's still worth a lot because it's so beautiful and so nice. The other thing is it's toned on the reverse of the coin.
Jacob Matiyevsky:All of the other examples we looked at were toned on the front, the the side that most people would look at. And typically, reverse toned coins do not bring as much as a floverstone example would.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Yeah. This is spectacular. I love the outline in orange around the whole eagle. I mean, it's pretty much in all the key kinda parts.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's it's like there's, a flame kinda behind the eagle almost that's kinda, you know, bursting through the the feathers. You have this the the motto in god we trust that's also been highlighted in in this orange. I love this coin. I think it's absolutely amazing. So give us an idea kinda roughly of of the where the market would would price something like
Jacob Matiyevsky:this. So I'll just say offers of north of 10,000 have been made on this coin from from multiple different people. So somewhere probably somewhere in the 10 to $15,000 range is where this would fall, which is very unusual for a reverse toned low grade coin.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Sure. Well, spectacular. I don't know if there's anything else out there that's like this, and that's getting back to what we talked about with them being works of art. This is a great example of something that is sort of nature's handiwork, nature's artwork, and you're buying an opportunity to preserve or be the custodian of this piece of art, so to speak, that you're going to hold on to for some time, some decade, and then hand over to the next curator, so to speak, and custodian of the of the artwork. This is incredible.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Considering also this coin, if it was completely, bright white and and then it's just silver, this is probably $80 coin or something. But with all of these colors, we're we're looking at maybe close to $15,000, which is, absolutely incredible. So, I'm going to stop our share. K. I'm keeping an eye on the on the time.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So I just wanna give you an opportunity to tell everyone a little bit more about where they can find you, about how to do business with you. Do you work with collectors? Do you work with dealers? Do you do a lot of business on your website, on Instagram? And just in general, like, can people find you and how they can, you know, go about, you know, getting some getting relationship with you to to to start buying some of these?
Jacob Matiyevsky:Sure. So I I work very much with both collectors and dealers. I have a really wonderful base of of collectors who are very serious about these toned coins and want the best of the best pieces, and we we try to do our best to to find ones that suit their collection. There's a lot of different ways to collect toners. You can collect them by by date.
Jacob Matiyevsky:You can collect them by the type of toning. You can try to get one of every single color. There's so many different ways to do it, different patterns. So I work with a lot of collectors in that sense, actually all the way from entry level to the very, very advanced collectors. And then I also do a lot of business with dealers as well, supplying just wholes wholesaling coins for them, supplying them with with examples for their own collector bases, also ranging from entry level pieces all the way to to really
Tony Gryckiewicz:amazing at the fun show, I wasted your time for, twenty minutes as I looked through all of your coins you had for sale. And I didn't buy anything because I didn't feel really confident enough in understanding this market enough, but it gave me the idea to have you on the podcast, give everybody some information about how to to to look at these coins and and approach them and help me out as well. So, hey, man. Thank you so much for doing this. I I think we just kinda hit the really tip of the iceberg on some of the questions that I I had about this market and about how you approach this and and so forth.
Tony Gryckiewicz:But this was a fantastic introduction for people on on colorful toned Morgans. So I just want to say thank you again. And specifically where can people find you? You have a website, right?
Jacob Matiyevsky:I do, yes. So you can find me through my website. It's monstertonedmorgans.com. Feel free to contact me there, or the best way to reach out to me is actually through Instagram. I'm monstertonedmorgans on Instagram as well.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Feel free to shoot me a direct message if you want to work with me, or if you have a question about toning, I'm also more than happy to to discuss it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Awesome. So that's monster tone morgans dot com or reach out through Instagram, and we'll put all both of those in the show notes of the the episode. So alright. Thank you very much. I know you gotta get over to the airport.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So thanks again, and we'll talk again for sure. Thanks.
Jacob Matiyevsky:Sounds good. My pleasure, Tony. Thank you.
