Is hoarding a heredity function

g097103

As some may recall I have told the story of my grandfather the hoarder. His hoard was distributed to the
family and my brother and I have since discovered we are also starting to do the same thing. Now it gets
interesting. I was talking to my brother the other night and he mentioned that he was going to our uncles
(grandpas son) to look over some Morgans as he had been offered his pick to help with our sets. He called
this evening and was in shock to say the least. He said he saw at least 5 mint sewn bags which he had
declined to cut open to search through. Then they started opening other containers, seems that when these
had been bought no one knew about the PVC problem and as a consequence thousands of Morgans have
been stored in schedule 40 PVC pipes for the last several decades. He says they don't appear to be
contaminated on a global scale but is going out this week to buy 5 gallons of acetone and a solvent wash
system to try to save what he can. I see a trip in my future. Our uncle suffers from the same vision our
grandpa had...it's only silver and only worth spot.

Scott M

ps - I have to get him to look closer at the bags to get dates, etc. And yes he knows how dangerous
acetone is, thus the wash system that slams a lid shut if anything ignites. He used to wash things in JP4.

DHeath

No kidding. Is jet fuel a good parts cleaner? I've always known certain petroleum based cleaners made pretty good degreasers, but I never knew anyone who used JP4. Too bad about the PVC. I'd cherry-pick and sell away the bullion.

g097103

DHeath, he swears by it. But then he was an airport mechanic for years. I've seen him wipe down
his workbench with it then throw a match on it to burn off the JP4. WHOOSH and it was clean. Kinda rough
on any paperwork in the area though. He still sets beads on tires by spraying starting fluid (ether) into the
tire and throwing a match at it. DO NOT try this at home.

Scott M

ldhair

I'm not sure you really want to put acetone in a parts washer. I might be wrong but the flashpoint is wrong. The fumes coming off a washer full of acetone will be more than you can stand. If the switch to the pump is anywhere near the tank, the spark in the switch can be enough to light up your day. On the other hand a nice industrial unit, (explosion proof) and a breathing set up is what you need.

Conder101

I've been trying to think of what kind of PVC problem you would get with them being stored in schedule 40 PVC pipe. If the pipes were sealed then what I would expect would be a white hazing of silver chloride and I don't think that will come off with acetone. you shouldn't get the same kind of green slime that we see with the use of PVC flips because the pipe is intended to be rigid and so doesn't have the plastizier added to it. All you would have is the outgassing of HCl that PVC does as it ages. If the pipe was sealed to keep out moisture the reaction between the HCl and the silver should be rather slow. (It proceeds much faster in the presence of moisture.) The produce how ever is silver chloride which is a white solid (hence the white hazing) which if I remeber my solubility rules in only soluble in an acid solution. So acetone probably won't affect it. These might actually be better dipping candidates. If they do have some kind of slime or oilly coating on the then I would expect it to be old machine or skin oils. If that is the case and the pipe was sealed then they will probably clean up beautifully with no damage on the coins at all.

g097103

That's good info Condor. I'll pass it along to him and we will see what we see.

Thanks,
Scott M