I usually keep a small piece of paper to slide under my grain focusser, and I have one for every paper I'm using. These pieces of paper are just cut from a sheet, and have had no chemical processing.
So the other day I noticed that my piece of J&C Nuance G2 paper is getting reddish while my piece of Kentmere Bromide G3 is greenish.
Intrigued, I threw them both in the fixer to see whether it would preserve the color. Most of the tinge went away, the Nuance being still slightly red, but the green of the Kentmere was all gone.
My hypothesis is that there are some silver grains that developped through printing-out because of prolonged exposure to light, and their inherent properties (size, shape, etc) caused the various tints. IIRC, printing-out processes usually require toning BEFORE fixing, in order not to wash away all the solid silver. Thus, if what happened was printing-out, then it would make sense that the fixer removed a good deal of the solid silver.
Would there be a way then to preserve the color via toning? Or will it preserve only the image, not the original tone?