Ok...uncle. I have had trouble getting displacement maps to work correctly w/ image maps. Procedurals  seem to work, but I have tried quite a few things. Anybody else noticing problems here? Here is an example. This is a normal map used as bump...works fine. However, I have gotten displacement in the past, but looks horrible so then I tried some sub-d options...no help. Now I can't get anything to show. The render is the bump, but the dismap is showing in back. Enable and displace in 3d view are enabled. I turned off bump also...nada. Kinda wanta know if there might be some bugs? I used the same dis map in D|S for displacement...works fine. Don't see anything wrong with map anyway.

Try going, now, up to the top shader in your screen shot, and see all of the little things you have not adjusted or ticked.

 Think that will help you.

No...first thing I did...many times.(the options I mentioned are there) There are issues. One was a memory oddness that I have seen happen with c5 if it is loaded up. Have seen it stop performing with movies, for example. I closed it out then restarted and it worked. The results still don't look good tho and another problem is it appears you can't apply it to different surfaces...all or nothing. D|S can do this fine and Carrara doesn't handle bump maps this way. So sadly,....probably will be limited use. I could try creating a plane and set it on top, but that is just silly. Makes the displacement in hex, if it cooperates, kinda useless for c5 too. Disappointing.

Normal maps are colored.  Not grayscale.  Is your coin UV mapped first before using your bump texture as displacement on it?

I am not using the bump/normal map as displacement. I am using a normal map as a bump...that is shown in the render...it works. What isn't working is the dismap, which is shown in the background,...It displaces now, there was some kind of Carrar glitch with that, but it won't apply to anything, but the entire object. So looks absurd. Yes it is mapped.