Newly Inserted Items are Faded

What gives? A user created a block and it came in with faded colors. He then copied a block and it had faded colors. Hmmm.. When I listed the layers and the objects all seemed fine but it still looked faded. It was not in an edit mode of any sort. I researched and found what I thought was an unrelated variable LAYLOCKFADECTL which controlled the visualization of objects on locked layers (not the case here). When we set this variable to 0, we got our blocks back to vibrant colors again. Oh well, fading is gone, bewilderment still here.