It seems that NGC and other TPGs don't have a designation for copper alloy rounds for colors besides Red, RB, or Brown. The proof coin below was graded by NGC as a Red-Brown color... there's definitely a Red color, and the obverse is completely red. But the brown... is absent. The devices only appear brown. The fields around the devices are much lighter in color, and don't resemble anything that's brown, or even red for that matter (so, it couldn't have been interpreted as a brown coin with red spotting around the devices). So, then, is "Red-Brown" a catch-all color designation for everything that's not either completely Red or completely Brown? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the TPGs assign all toned copper alloy coins as "RB", even if it's a majority Red with, say, yellow toning, so it may make sense from a conventional perspective. But what if it's 90% Red with 10% bright red toning?? Overall, if "RB" is a catch-all color designation, it doesn't really say much about the coin's color.
I'm not a big copper collector, but from what I've seen, "Red" means "original copper color" and "Brown" means "anything else". I've seen photos of electric-blue toned cents that were graded MS6xBN.
Red, means full red. If it has any brown at all, it is RB and if it is brown or heavily toned, it is brown.
So a Red coin with some yellow toning, but no brown at all, would be a Red-Brown (like the coin example from the first post)?
Probably - I have the same impression as jeffB that "Red" means "the same color it was on the day of issue," and nothing else additional.
PCGS has it listed as Red 95% or more original Red remaining Brown 5% or less of the original red. Everything in-between RB
Yes PCGS Standards: 95+% full red = Red/RD 95+% full brown =Brown/BN Everything else is red-brown/BN NGC uses as low as 85-90% as the upper threshold or at least that is what I was told by a NGC employee in a thread a few years ago.
