Copper - what is 'red' vs 'red-brown'

bloodhound1

What is the PCGS standard when grading Indian heads or Lincolns as to whether or not the coin is Red or Red-brown? I have some graded RD that look less red then some of the RB's, and visa-versa...

STEWARTBLAYNUMIS

Bloodhound 1

This is,has been and will always be a problem.I will ask you Is the coin red/Brown or Brown with Red ? I believe Pcgs will call a coin with 15% red R/b as well as 80% red R/B.They have been known to call wood grained Indians from the 1864-1880 period as well as the 1909 Lincolns and Indians Red.

The EAC or Early American Copper Club grades as well as prices large cents and half cents based on the amount of red on the coin

Good Luck

Stewart

ldhair

To make things even more tricky, I have watched some of my red cents in slabs turn RB over time.

Pushkin

What's a lot more fun is watching two of my finest BN IHCs turn RD.



<< <i>edited for accuracy >>

Oh, the RD isn't RD, its FER (fire engine red) - sorry about that.

shylock

Rick Montgomery addressed their RB guidelines, as well as their copper guaranty, in a question I asked in the Q&A forum (link). As Stewart mentioned, 10-15% seems to be the rule but the various grader's interpretation of it may be another story.

relayer

I submitted two 2002 proof sets at different times and both came back with the designation "RD DCAM" on the cent.

Those designations are not mutually exclusive of course, and the first time I thought it was a mistake, but I think they are adding both designations as to color and cameo now.

jdimmick

Here is an intresting story for you RD/RDBRN pursurers

When I was in Idaho last year, I stopped into a local shop and saw a beautiful PCGS-64 Red 1914-d lincoln.
The coin was simply awsome red, I bought this coin and brought it back with me to the southeastern US.
I swear that this coin dropped back to a 75-80% red, and began to show signs of turning what you would call a red/brn red just in the few short weeks of being back in the good old humid southeast.

I believe the transition from a cool dry Idaho air to the humid south east speeded up the natural process of aging of copper. I thought a slab kept that from happening, but I was told by a very respected individual, that all coins will naturally oxidize over time, even in a slab
jim d

shylock

Jim -- just out of curiosity, what generation PCGS slab was it in? You should send it in for regrade, you may be due a decent amount of money.

I live in an area with very humid summers (Long Island) and have never had a slabbed copper turn a wink. A combination of the slabs, a few absorbant cannisters and an airtight container should make 99.9% of red coppers last more generations than they've already survived. This coin of Stewart Blay's has made it 125 years, and was raw until the mid 1990s.

jdimmick

Paul,
Thanks for the info, At the time I dont think I actually thought about the PCGS guarantee. I dont have the coin anymore, I actually found a buyer(dealer) for it at a local show, and sold it about 6 months ago. I believe that I ended up losing several bucks on the coin, but I was scared to hold onto it any longer for fear it would turn even more red/brown. If I am not mistaken the coin was in the first new blue type holder before they added the bar code below.
Now, I have actually downgraded to a beautiful AU-55 PCGS with great strike, surface and nice even brown surfaces.

One question, for future, How would you be able to prove to PCGS about a coin oxidizing while it was in your possesion, especially if it were only just gradually, but retained still enough red to still be called red.

Although, based on your experience, maybe I just had a bad coin, with an undiscovered surfcae color problem that was not detected upon initial certification.
jim

Lakesammman

I've 2 other reasons why coins "turn" brown, both from personal experience.

1. Nothing really changed - you overlooked the brown when purchasing the coin - the more experienced one gets, the less this will happen.

2. Paranoia - I had a great P66R IHC a few years back. The rev. was borderline RB, the obverse red. I swear, every time I looked at it the reverse was getting darker. I had alot of money in it and decided I'd better get rid of it before it turned black! I've seen it twice since at auction and it is still a beautiful coin with slight mellowing of the red reverse - it was just my imagination and paranoia.

I'm sure this has never happened to anyone else.....

shylock

Jim - unless it turned enough for PCGS to downgrade it to RB you'd be out of luck. But with a coin that changes so quickly it should only be a matter of time before it qualifies for the downgrade.

I asked about the slab generation because I was thinking along the same lines as your last comment. If it was recently slabbed I'd now be a little suspicious about the "awesome red" color it use to have. Another possiblity is it spent some time raw in a humid environment, perhaps after being cracked out, removed from an album, etc... When copper is removed from a long time stable environment, handled by the owner and grading service (carefully or not so carefully) with a thousand mile trip in between, all bets are off as far as how long it should remain red. At least until some time has gone by to see if the oxidation process got rolling during that tenuous period.

I had a similar experience as Lakesammman, but it was self-enduced. After experimenting with a tubular lighting system for coin imaging I noticed it generated much more heat than I expected, and I had been placing the tubes very close to one Indian cent in particular to capture its lustre. After examining the coin for many days afterward I was certain it had developed an off-tone in one area from the heat -- or had it? I could never look at it again without thinking about it, and never used the lights again.