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 Replies: 33 / Views: 10,433 |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Quote:
Almost did. 1942 US Pattern Cents, made out of plastic. Sure glad they went with zinc plated steel instead.
Back in the 30's and/or 40's there were a lot of States that used Mills. In Missouri they were both plastic and metal. Not sure but think the metal was Aluminum. They were in $0.001 and $0.005 pieces. The plastic ones had a tendency to bend easily. As to radio active material for coinage. Remember those glow in the dark numbers on watches some time back. Many people in the watch companies ended up with radiation poisoning. Plastic coins would never work. To easy to counterfeit. Get jamed in machines like vending machines. Bend to easily. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1234 Posts |
Quote:Find me a forge  and some titanium Obviously I was joking, and you forgot to mention Lithium, the stuff bursts into flame when you put WATER on it. A friend of mine in high school was a major 'pyro' he never did any arson but was a bit weird. one day in his physics class the teacher brought out some Thermite! He started drooling, they went out side and set it up, no one else understood what was about to happen so they were getting close to it (the teacher was not being negligent) but when they saw my friend standing well back they got the idea. Another radioactive house hold item from the late 40's - 50's was orange ceramic dishes, the way they got the orange color was with a by-product of uranium processing, or just the ore that you refine to get uranium. Check Grandmas serving dishes, if any are orange and warm to the touch... take it to some nice salt cavern in the desert somewhere. Edit: spelling Edited by ASLAN TVorlon
01/18/2014 2:02 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
I have got a little legal-to-own tritium keychain so I can find my backpack in the dark. Very useful. You can also own up to 15 pounds of unenriched uranium metal in the United States without having to tell the government, but all I have is a green Vaseline glass (and it is a bit hot). Most alpha emitters like uranium and radium are fairly safe outside your body (although they give off radon) but if you inhale or ingest any specks of the stuff it's very bad.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10045 Posts |
Quote:
all I have is a green Vaseline glass (and it is a bit hot). Most alpha emitters like uranium and radium are fairly safe outside your body Uranium is another pyrophoric metal, ie in powdered form it can ignite spontaneously. As Nalaberong noted, the greatest hazard would be inhalation, as heavy metal isotopes tend to stick in lung tissue and slowly irradiate you. Striking uranium coins would create a lot of dust hazard!  I would guess that recent glow-in-the-dark coins such as the dinosaur series employ strontium aluminate/europium paint. This material is entirely safe to handle, quite unlike radium! Note:a lot of radium paint can be a gamma emitter, probably due to the process which derived the radium, including other isotopes. I happen to have a couple WWII aircraft dials which emit mostly gamma rays!  These are not entirely safe to handle w/o precautions--just an FYI  Quote:
Check Grandmas serving dishes, if any are orange and warm to the touch... take it to some nice salt cavern in the desert somewhere. It's called Fiestaware, and it used UO3 for pigmentation. The radiation levels are fairly low and safe for occasional household use--the uranium is bound into silica glaze and will not get inhaled. Just don't use with acidic foods that may leach out uranium. Since there's very little if any spontaneous fission going on--the dishes are not warm to the touch, unless you heat them!  Edited by DVCollector
01/18/2014 2:22 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
510 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
 Canada
3692 Posts |
Yeah, don't be lighting aluminum on fire. That's nasty.
And are those Ti coins circulating coinage? I intended this to be about circulating coinage, not commemorative or collectors' coins because of the strength of Ti.
Edited by Libertad
01/18/2014 4:14 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
I have a titanium spork from Japan (cost $5), so I guess it is slowly approaching the "esoteric use" market...
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
4593 Posts |
-----Burton 50+ year / Life / Emeritus ANA member (joined 12/1/1973) Life member: Numismatics International, CONECA Member: TNA, FtWCC, NETCC, EveryCountry (online) coin club Owned by three cats and a wife of 40+ years (joined 1983) Author: 3rd Edition of the Sample Slabs book, https://www.sampleslabs.info/ |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
No, all the titanium coins are NCLT (Non-Circulating Legal Tender)
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2362 Posts |
I have a titanium knee and it is awesome! Sorry, I'm off topic  Member ANA and EAC "You got to lose to know how to win". Dream On by Aerosmith |
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
3831 Posts |
It's usually to do with cost versus benefit. Volatile base metal prices is the best constraint in recent years. Titanium would be a lot worse as it is an industrial metal. Historically any introduction of new metals have caused confusion and the public have often rejected them. Good examples are platinum, antimony, nickel (when initially released). These days most mints are heading towards plated steel due to the cost. China and Canada are two major countries that have shifted most coinage to plated steel coinages. That said, I still haven't bothered to get a titanium coin for my collection even though I have some of the tougher element coinage like antimony and tantalum. http://gxseries.com/numis/coin_elem...elements.htm |
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Pillar of the Community
Belgium
506 Posts |
On plated steel: in the Euro area, the 1, 2 and 5 cent coins are copper plated steel from the very start in 2002... and they were just following suit. In the UK the 1p and 2p coins are plated steel since 1992. The US avoided 'magnetic cents', using copper plated zinc cents from 1982 onwards. Hardly any better...
And then there's the Czech republic, where all current coins are steel, plated with copper or brass for different face value.
... all of those are "Nummis non grata" in my collection.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1234 Posts |
I do count those types in my collection, just to keep the numbers up  , but I don't like 'em much. |
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
510 Posts |
Future generations of metal detectionists will be finding nowt but rusty discs that were once coins
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Valued Member
United States
416 Posts |
two things I learned from this post: do not light aluminum or titanium on fire and do not breathe in uranium dust :)
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Posted 01/18/2014 10:30 am
