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Message:: [QUOTE="stevereecy, post: 840860, member: 19884"]I want to reiterate my question and offer up some solutions. Back in 1995, I went crazy looking for that doubled die cent. They were in my area. I didn't find any in all of the rolls I searched, but I did get an AU example in change, which was kind of cool. Anyway, I never did anything with those cents. I left them in my garage, in a box, all loose. So, the interesting thing is that if you go in there and look at them (cardboard box, hot, high humidity environment too), the top ones are brown(ish), but the ones underneath are still red. Essentially, they are protecting each other. They are acting as a "sacrificial anode" for each other. So I can offer this up...if I had a super duper killer red coin that I wanted to protect, whether it was in a slab or not...I'd store it inside a big pile of loose red cents. Maybe first putting it inside tupperware that I burped on a day of low air pressure.  Or, I'd try to rig up a vacuum chamber, but thats grist for another thread. But my questions (two posts back) is...are there two kinds of red cents? The ones I have in my garage are red because they've never been exposed to bad air, or limited amounts of bad air. They are unstable, and surely would turn brown in a non-air-tight slab. But I think there is another kind. Tonng is...essentially...multiple layers of oxidation...each one little more than a few atoms thick. When there are enough of them, they absorb and refract light enough to make colors. Here's where I start theorizing....I think that if you have a copper coin that gets to be 95% toned (and almost 95% inert), it is that 5%non-inert portion that is the killer. It will continue to be a pathway for the oxidation to take place, and that oxidation moves through the coin like a bucket brigade moving pails of water. But...if the coins tones over 100% of its surface, but the toning is still only a few atoms thick, it essentially becomes air tight in it's own skin. This is the other kind of red....a red that will not change.  To stay red, it needs to tone completely, but in a very thin, almost invisible layer. This theory, is the only way that I can explain coins that are more than 100 years old and are still red. I saw a photo of proof flying eagle cent the other day that made me want to cry...cry because I can't afford to buy stuff like that. It was so beautiful, and it was red. Guys, I just think that it got a quick coating of oxidation early, and then its own relatively inert skin is protecting it. Maybe it seems common sense, but go with the trend. If a coin is 40 years old, it might be red because it never had the opportunity to turn red, sort of like those in my garage. But if a coin has had decades or perhaps centuries to turn and has not, it likely won't because it is safe in it's own skin. At least that's the way I'd bet. Steve[/QUOTE]

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