These are the blue folders with the clear plastic pages. I had a couple of these folders from when I was a kid and threw them out because they smelled strongly of vinyl. When I started coin roll hunting I thought maybe I could make a bit of extra money selling small cent sets. The problem is that with pennies the album or binder can very easily end up costing more than the entire set of coins (unless you factor in key dates).
Unfortunately, these folders were the only cost effective choice and I didn't do my homework. I assumed that they would have stopped using vinyl but that is not correct.
All of my George V's and my own small cent collection stayed clear of these folders but I had made 19 complete/almost complete sets from 1937-2012. I'm just thinking about all the time I spent putting each coin in and then today taking every one of them out.
The type of people that would buy these "beginner" sets are probably children (for children) or people new to collecting. I decided I can't in good conscious sell what I know/consider to be a ticking time bomb.
The coins were sticky and smelled of PVC. The majority were in the folders less than a year but I still treated some of them in acetone. It's frustrating that a folder sold to collectors to hold and protect their coins is far worse than leaving them in a jar.
This is a cautionary tale which has probably been discussed before but I thought was worth repeating.
http://www.unitradeassoc.com/CoinFolders.htm"Each folder has four clear
vinyl pages with pockets to completely cover coin for ultimate protection while leaving both sides of the coin in view. The inside cover of each folder has a table listing the year issued for their respective pockets, making for the easy organization of coins."
Posted 02/01/2014 11:15 pm
