Hartberger & PVC...........or lack of it.

IlikeZARcoins

I had to dig deeper into the Hartberger PVC story as I had spend over 100 Euro on their goods.

Delving deeper I send an Email to the company itself asking whether their coin holders or pages contain PVC.

Their reply:

Dear Sir,

The window of our coinholders are made of polypropylene foil, that is 100% free of acids, pvc etc..
The pages are made of pvc, but the coins in the holders do never tough the pvc of the pages.
We are selling the products since 1975 and we never had any complains.
Take care, that the coins are dry, when you put these in the holders. for further information, you can phone us and ask for mr. Hans de Man.

Philip

That's good news.

1jester

I don't believe it for a second. I had transfer of PVC to the coins within weeks of putting them in the holders. Likewise, the imprints of the coins were on the plastic foil. Generally speaking, the more brittle the plastic is, the more safe it is, and vice versa-if the plastic is very flexible, the chances are that it is harmful.

Why don't you open up a few of those holders and see if there is imprinting of the coin onto the plastic foil--if so, get the coin out of there post-haste. You can also put the coin into acetone and see if a cloud develops in the clean acetone (meaning there was junk on the coin). This happened to me after I bathed my coins that had been in Hartberger holders; the coins were most certainly PVC contaminated, and I had silver, copper as well as copper-nickel coins which all got the poison.

DeutscherGeist

A Dutch product should be sound. I guess it was a false alarm. However, if the pages contain PVC, doesn't a gas get released that can still infiltrate the coins and damage them?

How about the glue they use for the self-adhesives. Can that harm a coin's luster?

1jester

I'd love to be able to believe their story about being harmless to coins. And I might have to eat crow on this one day, but I'd swear on my grandma's grave that they caused PVC damage to my coins. I think I still have the old flips (which I saved as evidence to prove that they're harmful), but it's been 3-4 years, so I'm not absolutely sure I still have them. Anyway, I can't imagine another scenario that would have transferred PVC contamination to the coins besides those holders. Well, there's one other possibility, and that is that every single coin already had invisible PVC contamination on the coin prior to their being put into the holders.

DeutscherGeist

I had to bring this thread up again. This PVC is becoming such a nightmare. Everything I buy online has to be suspect, whether its a coin in a flip off ebay or any other plastic product.

I recently bought a credit card holder, a small book to put in credit cards, membership cards, driver's license, gift cards, etc. Its a nice leather binder and the shape is efficient. 3 cards to a page. Helps keep me organized. It has not been a month and the credit card is sticking to the plastic pocket. I had a hard time getting one out, and when I did, the numbers on the card left imprint on the plastic interior pocket. I took a sniff inside the pocket and it had a heavy chemical/plastic oder. That has to be PVC!!!

Many wallets that I came into contact with resulted in similar problems. Those clear pockets for cards lifts the print off the various cards I use. Luckily, they are just credit cards, not collectibles, but its getting really annoying. I cannot find a wallet or card holder that has something archival safe.

Back to Hartberger 2X2s. The company claims to use polypropylene for the clear window. I am familiar with polypropylene (PP) because of my baseball card hobby. We store cards in PP sleeves and holders too. I have been collecting cards since 1986 and used PP products just about that long too. It is an archival safe material. Not expensive either. Because Hartberger representative indicated the specific material they use for their plastic clear windows on 2x2s, there is reason to believe its the truth. And PP is definitely archival safe. I want to add that PP is not really that brittle. Its flexible to an extent, no odor, and stays clear indefinitely. I don't know why some products use mylar in place of PP, but it has nothing to do with archival issues.

Jester is actually a very credible person. There has got to be some kind of explanation to what he experienced using Hartberger 2x2s. The clear foil is very thin. The stuff they use on baseball card sleeves have been thicker. The few times when I have seen card sleeves particularly thin, I have noticed that they do stretch more and are not as rigid as their thicker versions. I always liked thicker sleeves for my cards because it made the card feel a lot more well protected and rigid as well.
So, Jester, by demonstrating how flexible the Harberger window is may be a function of its thinness. As to the PVC contamination you noticed on your coins after removing them from your Hartberger 2x2s, I suspect they might have had that before hand. What kind of sample size are we talking here? It really is not a stretch of the imagination that the coins you have now were likely in PVC at some point before reaching you. Also, if a coin is slightly oily, that residue will also go on the clear window of the 2X2 giving the appearance that the coin was compromised in order for the clear window to get that imprint.

We can email the Harberger company again to see how they respond this time. Just a suggestion.

determined

DeutscherGeist,

Other than what I posted in that recent thread I don't have anything to add right now.

But I've been following your posts and I am impressed by, and applaud, your tenacity on researching the subject. And I hope you will keep everyone informed on anything you find.

Not surprisingly one hears all kinds of contradictory things about PVC on the internet. So it's always a benefit to distill out what is truth.


I agree PVC is a nightmare. I just received a coin in a PVC flip last week. Grrrrr. When I question sellers/dealers about this they say it's OK for short term. I don't believe that at all. And if it sits in their case for a year in a PVC flip is that short term? Ah, no.

I still believe it can make a difference if more buyers will communicate their irritation to sellers when they receive coins in PVC flips. If not, why would sellers change their status quo?

savoyspecial

>>you can phone us and ask for mr. Hans de Man>>



i'm calling now

1jester

Good memory, Geist! (Better than mine, because I thought the holders were from Lindner, but at least it's a German name... ). It's been 8-9 years since this took place, so my memory is a bit rusty and I have no way to verify my belief that I'd conserved all the coins in acetone prior to placing them in these holders. I simply cannot remember, so there you have it; I have no way of validating any claims that the coins were PVC-free prior to putting them there, but that is what I thought. I do not believe I would have made such a claim if I hadn't cleaned the coins first. The sample was not very large, let's say 30 maximum. But 100% of them were effected, and they were copper, copper-nickel, aluminum and silver. In other words, just about every type of coin in existence, and the dates ranged from the middle ages to modernity. Every coin was affected, and there was an imprint of the coin on every holder. I've seen very thin foils and plastics, and I simply have a hard time believing these holders didn't hold PVC or some other material with plasticizers. After all, mylar holders also use a very thin layer of the material, and they don't expand like these did.

We might get to the bottom of this yet. But as for me and my family, we will use guaranteed inert mylar products.

SYRACUSIAN

That picture with the finger across the 2x2 has to be a classic Darkside image. Jester, perhaps you should have used the middle finger.






I recently bought a credit card holder, a small book to put in credit cards, membership cards, driver's license, gift cards, etc. Its a nice leather binder and the shape is efficient. 3 cards to a page. Helps keep me organized. It has not been a month and the credit card is sticking to the plastic pocket. I had a hard time getting one out, and when I did, the numbers on the card left imprint on the plastic interior pocket. I took a sniff inside the pocket and it had a heavy chemical/plastic oder. That has to be PVC!!!

Many wallets that I came into contact with resulted in similar problems. Those clear pockets for cards lifts the print off the various cards I use. Luckily, they are just credit cards, not collectibles, but its getting really annoying. I cannot find a wallet or card holder that has something archival safe.


I know that holder that you're talking about. I think it's better suited for business cards, not credit cards and driving licenses. Color business cards will still leave an imprint after a certain time inside it, but as long as you don't take them out, who cares? An all leather wallet with 4-5 credit card slots would be more suitable for the job. You can even find wallets with 4-5 slots on both sides inside, if you really have a big number of such documents, but you'll obviously be able to see just the edge of each card.

pruebas

I agree with Jester.

Polystyrene, polyethylene (Ziploc™ bags), polypropylene, polyester film (Mylar™), and even paper envelopes are all safe for coins. With the price of coins, why even fool around with anything else? The only thing going for PVC is that it's cheap.

I wouldn't let PVC (soft, hard, plasticizer-free, whatever) within 10 feet of my coins!