Lint on inside of slab - RESOLVED WITH SCIENCE!
pendragon1998
Posts: 2,070 ✭✭✭
I've just got a PCGS slab with a very obtrusive piece of blue lint stuck to the inside of the viewing window. Any tips for at least shifting it to the side? I've tried tapping the slab, but no luck. I was thinking about applying some static electricity, but I don't know a good way to do that. Suggestions?
This is doubly irritating, because this is a replacement for an overgraded PCGS MS70 that I had to return to the UK, paying for postage both ways. I really don't want to ship this thing to be reslabbed.
This is doubly irritating, because this is a replacement for an overgraded PCGS MS70 that I had to return to the UK, paying for postage both ways. I really don't want to ship this thing to be reslabbed.
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My genius wife suggested that I should replicate the rabbit fur and balloon experiment from high school physics. Not having a balloon, and the cat not willing to stand in for a rabbit, I blew up a gallon sized ziplock baggie and grabbed my fleece jacket from the closet, and set to work.
I vigorously rubbed the baggie-balloon on the jacket, building up an static electrical charge on the surface of the insulator (baggie). I then applied the charge to the slab. Nothing much happened, but after I tried it a few more times, I gave the slab another few taps on the table, and this time the lint easily released and is now resting on the far edge of the viewing window, completely separated from the coin. The lint would not budge during previous attempts to tap on the slab, so I suspect I weakened the static bond between the lint and the slab plastic, allowing me to move it out of the way.
<< <i>It's a 2010 coin. lolz >>
So it's not beyond the Statute of Lintations...........
<< <i>Looked like a synthetic fiber from a blue sweater. CSI is on the case. >>
Wasn't from the Bulgarian blue fiber factory outside Sofia, was it? You don't want that anywhere near your coins.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
<< <i>an overgraded PCGS MS70 >>
Why haven't you been banned for posting remarks like this?
The "experts" say it's impossible to judge a coin from an internet image and since you didn't even at least provide an eBay quality scan I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that since coins are intended to circulate by being carried around in pockets, and pockets naturally contain lint, and the lint wasn't even placed on it intentionally, (intent means a lot in these circumstances) in no way can it be construed as Artificial. That should address the issue poised by BAJJERFAN.
A word of warning when subjecting coins to sudden bursts of static electricity: This is true, I'm not making this up: There used to be a guy here & on eBay that was smoe kind of mad scientist, I forget his I.D. but surely smoebody remembers, help me out here, he used to put coins on smoe kind of impulse generator that would shock coins, and the sudden inplosion of electrons collapsed the gravity field, kinda like a black hole, and it reduced the coins to about 1/2 of their original diameter and he sold hundreds of them as novelity items. He would even make custom shrunk proof & mint sets of dates, mm, type, etc. Maybe TomB can explain it better because he's a rocket scientist and knows all the big fancy words & theorys and all I know is what I read in the VAM book and on the internet and we all know how reliable that is.
You shouldn't be buying American coins from the UK anyway. The British are not to be trusted since they moved the production of Triumph motorcycles from Meriden to a rice hole in Thailand. Obviously the quality of Brit coin products followed the same decline.
Russ, NCNE
http://teslamania.delete.org/frames/interesting1.html
I don't know how to link it any other way.
Edited to add - they have pics on that site.
I do know this works with a old bar trick, paper match balanced on upright nickel with glass over top.
Good luck.
The replacement coin looks a lot better. It's definitely properly graded.
<< <i>You are the Louis Pasteur of slab cleaning!
Make that the Nikola Tesla of slab cleaning
Looking for Top Pop Mercury Dime Varieties & High Grade Mercury Dime Toners.
<< <i>Yep.. Dog is right. You can find 'coin shrinking' on the internet... explains the entire process. Pretty amazing. Cheers, RickO >>
The internet, eh?
Is that thing still around???
You wouldn't want to give away your location.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
You wouldn't want to give away your location.
<< <i>This is the link for one of the firms that shrinks coins. I bought a couple of them. Really neat.
http://teslamania.delete.org/frames/interesting1.html
I don't know how to link it any other way.
Edited to add - they have pics on that site. >>
...here's the linky