Jason Rogers wrote:

Maybe I'm crazy but I live in an area with many historic properties and I've
seen some new paint jobs where the paint has the appearance of a leaded
paint (hard to describe - a dull metallic sheen, I guess). Is there
anything to this...is there some way to achieve this appearance or is it
purely coincidental?

I don't think you could tell a leaded vs an unleaded paint by visual
inspection in a blind test (one where you didn't know which was the
leaded sample a priori). The sheen is a function of what flatting
agents are used. There are some lines of paints make specifically for
reproduction use which attempt to match the appearance of early paints
as nearly as possible. If they are real historic reproductions that may
be the case they're using some specially formulated paints to achieve
the look w/o too much concern for budget.