According to Jason Rogers :
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?

Older homes tend towards a certain look in paints - semi-gloss or gloss
oil paints - especially after a few successive paint jobs. It was simply
a matter of what style was popular at that time, and reproducing that style
again with newer paints.

Obviously, lead paint has been banned for quite some time, so a "new paint
job" won't have lead.

Seeing an _old_ paint job looking like that is somewhat more indicative of
the presence of lead, than, say, a flat paint of similar vintage. But
without testing you can't be sure, and of course "new paint jobs" won't
be lead-based no matter what they look like.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.