I Found Out My Coin Album Has PVC

I have some aluminium and stainless steel Italian coins (1 lira to 100 lire) that fall into that category - they have been in PVC pages for years and show no adverse signs. The coins that seem to be badly affected are lustrous copper and brass, silver alloy (especially the 50% alloy British coins of 1920-1946) and for some reason the bronze- and brass-coated steel German minor coins of 1948-1999. The edge on US clad coins also tends to go green... I bought an old coin album from the 1970s at a garage sale about 20 years ago with a mixture of foreign coins in it, and it was interesting how some were affected much worse than others.

There is also a huge variety in album pages - the worst ones I ever came across were some marketed by W H Smiths in the 1980s that a friend of mine bought - the coins discoloured very rapidly and all needed cleaning. (They have since changed their composition and their current pages seem to be PVC-free).

That is odd. I wonder if they were shipped the wrong pages because the photo and description clearly indicate they have 20 pockets.


Because it is cheaper and they might be okay if you can control the storage environment (low and stable humidity and temperature, no large fluctuations). A stable environment may keep the pages from breaking down. Your results may vary, so I would keep to the good stuff.