1980 Lincoln Penny - Would This Be Considered Red Or DCAM Colour?

I'd call this one brown, it may get a RB but really not enough red to push it into RB territory. A DCAM would be short for Deep Cameo which is only a designation for a proof coin, this cent is not a proof.

I agree with westcoin.

To add a bit - You are getting your surfaces terminology mixed up. Red, Red Brown (RB) and Brown are for colors. Your coin is likely Brown. It needs at least 5% red color for the RB designation.

CAM (Cameo) and DCAM (Deep Cameo) are descriptors for proof strike device frosting levels.

Agree emphatically with all above.

with the information, BadThad's response is the most like mine and not just due to the avatar ..

Color designation only applies to uncirculated copper coins. All circulated copper coins are assumed to be brown. You can certainly have color such as from environmental toning as one example but this is unrelated to the grade designation of color when sending in which is related to your question. Red refers to the hue of fresh copper, as it would appear just after the coin is struck. Because of copper's propensity to darken over the years, only very small fractions of old copper coins are found with coloration that would numismatically be deemed Red. According to PCGS grading guidelines, the following defines the Red designation for a copper coin: PCGS designated Red (RD) for copper coins that grade MS60 or better and show 95% or more of their original mint-red color.

PCGS Director of Education Mike Sherman explained for grading that a full red copper coin will display 95% or more of its original color, while red & brown will display anywhere between 5% and 95% of its original red color which should help in self grading some of them. Brown (BN) (Less than 5% of original red color visible). On all Mint State and Proof copper coins (Half Cents, Large Cents, Small Cents, Two Cent Pieces and some patterns) one of the three color ratings is assigned.

https://www.PCGS.com/news/a-look-at...designations
https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/cop...ading-768388
http://goccf.com/t/418624

On Proof coins, recognition is made if there is high visual contrast between the devices and the fields. This usually appears as frosting on the devices, and mirror-like reflectivity on the fields. Two levels are recognized by PCGS: Cameo (CAM) and Deep Cameo (DCAM)

NGC uses Cameo and Ultra Cameo designations after the numeric grade to describe the degree of frost present on the design elements. If little or no frost is present, no designation will be used. (Note: Ultra Cameo is generally synonymous with Deep Cameo, another common term in the hobby.)

no. It does seem sometimes that many questions are asked regularly and have been given good answers or articles written on them at some point. One issue is that the info is scattered all over and just using search in some cases will not necessarily point to which ones have the better answers or articles which then requires a lot of time to read/research to sort them and then bookmark.

So I guess in those specific cases of answering questions that just need a 'right' answer it was more helpful curation of the best content I could find. There is lots of incorrect information also included in general searches, and especially with coins as well which I eliminate



Since I'm still learning quite a bit ongoing, I've generally added the sources sometimes when there is more than the single piece of info. Here is a few coins of mine I remember posting along with the coins from a contestt I won on CCF from SkeletonWizard, so that might help to know I'm not virtual like Max Headroom.

Hey everyone thank you for your comments. I need to take the time to slowly read it and absorb. This is all very new to me! Appreciate it !!