A question about stickers on slabs.
Maywood
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Most collectors know or should know not to use rubber bands to hold slabs together where the band goes across the coin. The chemicals can bleed through the plastic and actually leave a dull streak across the coin inside. This causes me to wonder if all the stickers on coins, held in place with some type of adhesive, might pose a similar danger to the coins inside the slabs?? Could the chemicals leach through the plastic and damage coins??
Maywood.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
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I would like to see rubber bands bleeding through a slab. They do it with mylar, but it's hard to imagine they would bleed through the thick plastic slab. If it did, gassing a coin in a slab would be much easier.
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I have a 5- drawer blueprint cabinet that I use as a coin cabinet. It is all metal. When I would open the drawer everything in the drawer always slid to the back. I decided to get that dimpled toolbox liner to put in the drawers. Very bad idea for PCGS slabs. The liner actually etched into the slab wherever a dimple touched the face of the slab. It only happened to the PCGS plastic.
The PCGS slab has that bulbous(like a coin capsule) viewing area. That came into contact with the tool liner. ATS holders are smooth faced which only allowed the ridges of the holder to come in contact with the liner. ATS holders would not have been immune if they had contacted the liner. I don't know how long it took to etch the plastic. It only took weeks rather than months or years when I noticed. I wouldn't put any type of rubber band around any of the holders.
It may not be the "rubber". It may be solvent or a volatile organic. I know numerous dealers who use rubber bands on slabs with no visible damage
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I see the dealers at coin shows do it also. I would probably do it also if I had not had this experience.
The liner was brand new from the store. There very well could be residual chemicals from the manufacturing process of the liner. That goes for most any product. This was the closest I could come to a rubber band which could also have leaching chemicals. The liner is some type of synthetic rubber also. It's just my PSA warning. Wrap your slabs with rubber bands at your own peril.
Those little spots took a lot of elbow grease to polish out.
It looks like solvent etching the surface, which is why you can polish it out. I have slabs from a dealer estate that have ancient rubber bands that have done nothing to the slab or the coin.
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To the rubber bands: when I worked for a dealer it was common group 5-6 slabs together with a rubber band and place them in monster boxes to transport to/from shows. They'd be stored like that 2-3 weeks between shows until we noticed a very faint streak going across some of the slabbed coins. We talked to other dealers and they said they'd noticed the same thing and started to place the band across the top of the slab where the insert is at.
After that no more problems. It's real, I'm not making it up.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
It doesn't make physical or chemical sense... unless we're talking about surface damage on the slab. Chemicals don't travel in straight lines and gassing studies on slabs don't show penetration except at the seams.
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This calls for an experiment to show what is actually happening. I use rubber bands around a layer of bubble wrap when shipping stuff, and it's usually rubber bands others send me, so I don't control the type or age of rubber band I use other than not using ones that break or look like they're about to.
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I have never heard that about rubber bands, that is interesting and scary!
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Nothing personal, but I don't think this is accurate. It makes no sense, and I've never seen a rubber band have an effect on coins in slabs. Even months or years of storage at a time, no change. Some types of rubber bands leave the plastic with minor residue on the surface that is easily wiped off.
Requesting photos of an example...
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you" Matthew 6:33. Young fellow suffering from Bust Half fever.
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The slab plastic is proprietary to our hosts. From memory (too lazy to look up a citation), there are some trace materials added in that allow another layer of verification. Some versions have weak fluorescence in the insert (NGC), label, or plastic.
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I don't have any issue with auction houses or seller using rubber band to ship me coins. However, I do have issue with seller use tape to tape the coins together. Once I have to send a coin back to a eBay seller because after taking out the tape it left a big tape spot on the holder.
It's more secure to drill a hole through the coins and use a bolt w/nut to hold the coins together. You can add washers if you're concerned about protecting the surfaces.
I've done experiments with all 3 major TPG slabs, and for the most part they're all airtight. I submerged 2 P, 2 N, and 2 C holders in my bathroom sink for up to 60 seconds, and the PCGS slabs actually had zero water intrusion or bubbles. There CACG slabs had a tiny bubble every few seconds, and the NGC slabs were just bubbling a bit more frequently. None of them had any consequential water intrusion, and IMO if they're air/watertight, I don't see how a rubber band could off-gas through the plastic. Perhaps rattler holders or some other old slab, but the newer designs seem to protect the coins pretty well.
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Gas effusion would be different than water. But, I agree that I don't see how rubber would generate any gas that penetrates the hard plastic. It's usually the seams that are the issue. The other thing about any gas penetration is that it wouldn't be through the plastic in a straight line to the coin as was suggested.
20+ years ago, Weimar White did experiments with H2S gas and found some penetration along the seams. The later slabs were more "airtight" and should have had less. But people are still trying to artificially tone coins using H2S and other gases and, again, the penetration appears to be in from the seams not through the lenses.
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I've heard that before about the rubber bands. Not a good mix 👎
Some of these would help
I like the CAC slab storage boxes.
I submerged 2 P, 2 N, and 2 C holders in my bathroom sink for up to 60 seconds
Maybe some of the long-timers here remember the thread from a member who was taking a bath and looking at some slabbed coins(I believe they were PCGS) and he dropped one into the water. Weird, I know, but he was wondering how to get the water out. Another member, MOC I believe, was gassing coins in a vacuum chamber set-up he had to AT them until the PCGS forum detectives discovered him.
So, no, these capsules are not necessarily air and/or water tight although it is probable that the leakage most often occurs at the seam. Also, plastic isn't 100% non-permeable and depending on the rubber composition there is quite likely at least a small percentage of sulfer included as well as other non-specified substances.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
And then the sulfur magically jumps across the air gap in a straight line to the coin?
Sulfur is a solid, it will not effusion through plastic. It's usually something like hydrogen sulfide. But Weimar white did that experiment years ago and it effusion through the seam not the lens l.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Very interesting. I have seen two slabs in the last six months or so with that pattern. We could not figure out what caused it. The dimpled areas would not polish out.
Recognizing the color and size, I think CAC uses these with their shipments. They are my favorite rubber bands I use on the daily, as they leave no residue. Good to know non-latex is the way.
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you" Matthew 6:33. Young fellow suffering from Bust Half fever.
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So I wonder what this guy was really up to.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Try WD-40. I would suspect even kitchen shelf liner would leave marks. The length of time it stayed in contact with the liner may have increased the scar depth.
Here is that same nickel. I just now polished it with WD-40. It took about 15+ minutes to get it to this point. You can see there may still be a little. More elbow and it will be gone.