Gloves

Excellent question. Powder-free latex and nitrile gloves should be fine. When googling your question, I came across this link ( http://www.queensu.ca/art/artconser...mHoffman.pdf ) where someone tried to figure it out for themselves.

The bottom line is that components exist in a variety of gloves that could be detrimental to coins in extreme conditions. But for handling, cotton and nitrile both work. I would personally use nitrile over latex since they historically have seemed to have less off-gassing and volatile impurities. (And who wants their hands to smell like latex?) The guy that did that experiment had to expose gloves to silver at high temperatures for over a month straight for a slight effect to be detected. You can put a coin in a PVC containing plastic container for a day and not hurt the coin at all. The fact that nitrile gloves are disposable give them an edge over cotton gloves in my opinion because they are always going to be clean. Cotton gloves pick up dust, contanimants, etc. from continued use that can be deposited in the coin.


This also came up as one of the first results in a google search, which suggests accelerant free nitrile gloves (http://www.nps.gov/museum/publicati...am/01-12.pdf)

The ones that come with the albums are large and stretchy. I can't imagine them not fitting you.

I use em when dealing with my ATB proofs.

Try putting a proof coin in an album without gloves. Almost impossible to do without leaving prints on em. That's about the only time I use them.

Haha you should see my Dansco ATB album, a beauty !

Thanks for the responses. My LCS dealer suggested I try the camera shop, the guy working there was about my size and said "good luck, I've never found any to fit".

And the only time I would ever handle a raw collectable coin is when I was putting it into a holder. I buy mostly modern silver proofs and don't want to risk getting a print on them.

So far I've been using cotton towels and wooden toothpicks to try to place the coin in the holder, straight up. It works but is very slow.

Rick

While I don't use gloves myself, you might try a photography store if you want cotton gloves, I have a package of them from when I was a working photographer, used them all the time when handling film negatives and slides. For coins I always feel like I'm going to drop the coin when wearing them, though if I had a super high grade coin in raw, that was irreplaceable Id consider using gloves over a velvet pad. Something like a Chain Cent with mint luster!