Need help evaluating case color

[B. Dudley]

This is a subject that will be debated until the end of time I think.
The faded color question applied a lot to later LC Smith guns. I see many of them that have dearly all of the original case color patterns showing, but they are about half as bright as thy were originally. I personally would be less inclined to call it a 50% gun, but certainly not a 100% gun. Compromise at 75% maybe?

True that guns like the subject A grade with a lot of engraving coverage hide case color. Especially color with a little wear.
I own a SC that has the stipple engraving on it. At first glance one would say there is little color remaining, but when looking closely in the right light, one would see that there is at least 80% remaining on the sides. I found that lower indoor light shows the colors on that gun better when looking at it in hand.

[Craig Larter]

As Brian and others have stated this will be debated until the end of time.
I believe Julia's is quite consistent in the standard they use to judge CCH. I feel they state the % of CCH as a percent of the total area ( includes the water table and breech faces) . Therefore, as an example a gun with 90% CCH will typically have no case color on the trigger plate. If the CCH is faded they will state that. The problem as stated is there is no "industry standard" to express the level of CCH.
It would be better and helpful if the % of total coverage was one expressed as one value and the remaining intensity as another %.

[Ray Masciarella]

I think we are getting some where. How about this for a fair way to measure it?

Start with Dean's method of deteriming how much of the surface is covered with any CCH regardless of it's color. Then rather than trying to assign a value to the originality of the color, just describe it. For example, the gun shown could be described as ____% CCH faded original colors. If the CCH was still there but faded to grey, it could be described as ___% CCH faded to mottle grey. This provides an objective evaluation and accurately describes the condition and originality of the gun.

I think that is more or less what Julia's does. With some exceptions, they are pretty consistent at it. Trying to describe the percentage of CCH and then the percentage of original color is difficult for a couple of reasons. First, one would have to know what the original colors were (which I actually think are fairly known to us). Second and more difficult, is to determine how much of the original color is left and how it may have faded. This would be subjective. Whether they were shown as two values or averaged would still lead to a subjective result that reasonable folks could differ on.

If we adopted something like I suggest, you would have a value for condition, ie the amount of CCH remaining, and a description of it originality, ie the color compared to the day it left the factory.