1986 Sandblasted Toner

[emodx]

So I found this 1986 P that looks like it was naturally sandblasted. Purple, orange, brown, and copper tones. What causes this sandblasted texture?

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[makecents]

We'll see what the pros say but I think it's just plating issues. Maybe something to do with the zinc in a particular run of blanks maybe?

[GrumpyEd]

It wasn't sandblasted, it may be pretty much natural the way it came with a little toning.

It just has bumpy plating. They came all different ways, smooth and nice, a few bumps, a mix of big and small bumps or a sort of even pattern of little ones like your coin.

Surfaces change the toning like this coin, like on the early matte proofs they have a micro texture that tones a certain way or like brilliant coins tend to be really reactive and tone in bulls-eye patterns or in a big blotch like if it's in a flip with a pinhole it will get a blotch or satiny coins tend to tone sort of nice because they aren't as reactive and tend to tone more evenly and slower.

[emodx]

It wasn't sandblasted, it may be pretty much natural the way it came with a little toning.

It just has bumpy plating. They came all different ways, smooth and nice, a few bumps, a mix of big and small bumps or a sort of even pattern of little ones like your coin.

Surfaces change the toning like this coin, like on the early matte proofs they have a micro texture that tones a certain way or like brilliant coins tend to be really reactive and tone in bulls-eye patterns or in a big blotch like if it's in a flip with a pinhole it will get a blotch or satiny coins tend to tone sort of nice because they aren't as reactive and tend to tone more evenly and slower.

so with bumps comes more surface area, which means more opportunities to tone. And this has a nice mellow natural tone look. So that makes sense. But it seems to me that a mint worker would catch defective planchets before or after strike and send the batch to the waffle press.

[GrumpyEd]

so with bumps comes more surface area, which means more opportunities to tone. And this has a nice mellow natural tone look. So that makes sense. But it seems to me that a mint worker would catch defective planchets before or after strike and send the batch to the waffle press.

Really the mint does not destroy coins with minor quality issues, they could never inspect all coins that well and there is no reason to make them perfect. I mean, they'd need to trash 25% of early zincs for horrible plating LOL.
They probably waffle things for other reasons like excess coins like for proof sets or some clear issue like I bet if they caught a huge doubled die before mixing with the others.
But the thing that confuses people is from looking at waffle coins often they look pretty normal and nobody can say why they got given a death penalty.

Other strange thing is..... I don't think they started using the waffler until around 2003 BUT, there is at least one known 1776-1976 bicentennial coin that was waffled, maybe they were clearing out a desk drawer and deemed it junk LOL.....

[jfines69]

The early frankenzincs were bad for the plating issues... There was all kinds of contamination on the cores prior to plating... That caused major issues like your coin has... What does the rev look like???

[emodx]

The early frankenzincs were bad for the plating issues... There was all kinds of contamination on the cores prior to plating... That caused major issues like your coin has... What does the rev look like???

With all its flaws it’s actually nice to look at.

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[jfines69]

With all its flaws it’s actually nice to look at.

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You are correct about nice to look at... I do not notice any split plating so that coin should be around for a long time... Good save!!!