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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;illini420, post: 1192748, member: 19423&quot;]Thanks!! Yeah, both business strikes, the IHC is an MS66RD and the 1909 VDB is an MS67RD, both very high end for the grade and do look like brand new pennies!!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I understand what you&#039;re saying, I go to shows and rarely see full red large cents and half cents.&nbsp; But they do exist.&nbsp; I&#039;ve even seen a handful of full red cents&nbsp; and half cents from pre-1800 (check out the Cardinal collection!!).&nbsp; They are extremely rare of course.&nbsp; But when you look at Lincolns of almost any date, even back 100+ years, there are plenty of full red examples available.&nbsp; Same goes for Indian Cents, even back to around 150 years old now, there are lots of red coins out there for most dates.&nbsp; I don&#039;t know all of the reasons why this is the case for the small cents, but not the large cents.&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Surely it has quite a bit to do with the handling and storage of these coins and not just the copper itself turning brown over time.&nbsp; I think it has more to do with the growth of coin collecting in the mid-19th to late-19th century and that collectors were just saving more nice examples of coins.&nbsp; In the late-18th Centry and early 19th-Century, the Mint didn&#039;t even save examples of their coins each year... and based on surviving examples today, it&#039;s apparent that very few collectors did as well.&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>And remember, if folks saving Indian Cents in the late 19th-Century managed to save them and pass them along to future collectors who happened to keep them full red until 2011 using the storage methods of their time (bags, rolls, cardboard albums, paper envelopes, etc.), I&#039;m much more confident that my modern storage of the coins in inert plastic slabs and flips will do even better to keep coins full red for a very long time.&nbsp; Beyond that, I keep my high-value red copper slabbed coins in Intercept Shield boxes for a little extra piece of mind.&nbsp; I live in a relatively low-humidity area so I&#039;m not as worried about that as people in other areas may be.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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