Hi! I Collect Elements.

So what is your point. The way I look at it that is about how long my money lasts after taxes anyway. Now something like Hydrogenium would be a fantastic material to pay your taxes with.
I always wondered why Latinum in not on that table. The Foringies use it all the time for money. Not sure if Foringies is spelt right either.
As we move to traveling into space most gasses could be used for money. Imagine a $100 bill made of Oxygen.

Awesome photo! Those little cubes are definitely worth keeping for their sentimental and historical value, if there's even a chance they came from Oak Ridge or the Manhattan Project itself!

However, yow! Handling them is probably not the safest thing. That black oxide rubs off easily - in fact, it looks like some of it has already rubbed off onto the paper it's sitting on. If you get any of that stuff inside your lungs it is very bad news, because each tiny little particle will sit there forever, quietly irradiating your delicate lung tissue with alphas until one day you end up with lung cancer. Please, please wash your hands thorougly after handling those!

In fact, if they were mine, I'd consider cleaning them off once with an acid bath, taking the cleaning materials to a hospital or university radiation safety officer for proper disposal, then giving the cubes several thick coats of polyurethane lacquer. I don't know if that would lessen their historical value but they'd be a lot safer to handle.

As for their monetary value as lumps of uranium, it looks like each cube is about 1 cubic centimeter, or 19 grams. On the rare occasions that United Nuclear has chunks for sale, they have lately been selling for $9/gram, so each cube is worth at least $171, probably more. I've seen tiny pieces sell on ebay for ten times that per gram... especially if you can find out more about their history and come up with a good backstory. Maybe they were used in Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1) the world's first artificial nuclear reactor!

This is without doubt, the most fascinating thread I've ever seen on CCF.

I know this pales to previous posts on the subject, but these are fairly neat.
Not sure, but have any coins ever been made of magnets? That'd be something -

http://www.earthmagnetjewelry.com/

To the fellow poster up above w/the small Ur cubes, I certainly hope you store those in a lead container & use nitrile gloves to handle them with, not your bare hands.

Plutonium's famed ultra-toxicity turns out to be an urban legend. Like most people I had always assumed that plutonium is incredibly poisonous in even the smallest quantities. However, after doing some googling and wiki'ing, I now see that the danger is way overblown and sensationalized by the media. I should have known.

The wiki article on plutonium has mangled source reference numbers, but I was able to track down the following:

From http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf15.html



As with uranium and some other alpha-emitting radionuclides, the main health threat of Pu is inhalation, and the most likely form to be encountered in this way is the oxide, rather than the metal itself.

There's this also: The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity http://russp.org/BLC-3.html

I learn something new every day. :)

I'm kind of surprised Uranium trades for so much on ebay ($9 a gram or $4077 a pound) considering it trades as a commodity for around $70 a pound (kitco price quote)

Fantastic thread. I never knew such a collection existed and I'm impressed. Thumbs up!

I'd have my doubts about the so-called "safe handling" of radioactive materials (of any sort).

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What was the cause of Marie Curie's death?
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History of Science, Marie Curie -

She died from Aplastic Anemia I am quite sure you can guess that is was almost certainly from handing radioactive materials unsafely. Which they didn't really know the dangers about yet. There is also a story about radioactive materials in test tubes that she had in her desk because she like the nice glow they gave off.
Aplastic anemia is a condition where bone marrow does not produce sufficient new red blood cells to replenish the blood.

Marie Curie died in 1934, of what was described as an aplastic pernicious anaemia of rapid, feverish development. This was nearly identical a diagnosis given for the first reported radiation-related death of a radium dial painter. "Rapidly progressing anaemia of the pernicious type" (Martland 1925). It is argued that her death was not a result of Radium exposure because pernicious anaemia believed to be caused by radiation exposures. it is quite likely that her doctor had misdiagnosed her illness, Indeed, her daughter, Eve Curie, wrote (1937): "the abnormal symptoms, the blood tests, differing from those in any known case of pernicious anaemia, accused the true criminal: radium." Marie's eldest daughter and collaborator, Irene Curie, died in her mid-50s of leukaemia. Reference: Curie, E. Madame Curie. Doubleday; Garden City, NY; 1937. Paul Frame, CHP, Ph.D.