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Most economical / safe storage means?

seattleMD

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What does everyone believe is the most economical, yet safe way to store a large amount of large coins like half and large dollars? The assumption is they will be put into storage and not moved / jostled, so my main concern isn't friction but more so contaminants reaching the coins and discoloring / damaging them. What common storage materials are safe to use with coins? I'd rather not go the route of purchasing plastic coin tubes if at all possible since they tend to be expensive.
 
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You have to be very careful with silver if your goal is that it never becomes discolored. Unlike gold coins, silver is effected by moisture and other elements so that it can tone/discolor over time even if you are careful. I don't know any specific ways to recommend without purchasing items specifically made for the goal you mention. If you are keeping your coins in a safe or coin box, etc., you should keep a desiccant/silica gel in the safe or box (not in the coin tube itself) to capture moisture. If you are keeping the coins simply for the silver value, I would not be too concerned with any toning or discoloration.

Make sure whatever holder you use is PVC free and is made specifically for holding coins. Never keep your silver coins in the plastic PVC flips you get from the coin store when you buy a coin.

If the coins are valuable to you outside of the fact they are silver, I like the airtight brand individual holders. They aren't cheap if you have a lot of coins you want to protect, but I have found they work well. Tubes in general can sometimes let in moisture. I have seen American Silver Eagles from the 90s starting to look pretty discolored and they were left in their tubes since day one. I have a couple of tubes of 1982 Mexican Libertads that were never opened from day one (that is, until I bought them recently). When I opened them I could see the top 2 coins were almost black in places due to moisture seeping in through the top of the tube. The rest of the coins looked great, except some showed darkening on the rims. None were completely what you would call perfect looking.

There have been some very old Morgan silver dollars released that have been in vaults that were in stored bags since they were made and they look perfect, so maybe the environment itself is more important than the specific holder, with respect to keeping out moisture, humidity, etc.

If the coins are really valuable, perhaps consider having them graded by NGC or PCGS, and they put them in pretty good slabs when they grade them.

Jim
 
I keep the plain jane silvers (40% & 90%) in wrappers I get from the bank. Can't beat the price.....ha!

The older coins & special ones go into the little 2x2 cardboard holders. Mine are all kept in safety deposit boxes so it is climate controlled.

What type of storage are you referring to?
 
I would use those 2x2 holders and for the run of the mill keepers roll them and stick them in a safety deposit box.... I have some coins that were left in those damn Whitman books and it rusted a bunch of them and Ihave a older I.H. penny thats in a round plastic holder and it is all discolored and has black spots on it now ...safety deposit boxes are pretty cheap I have one , oh speaking of which that maybe where that 1793 large cent is ...hmmm.. I keep forgetting to check for it ...
 
Scalper,

Hope you didn't buy that 1793 off Ebay. Lots of counterfeit from Chinese sellers in that type of coin.

Jim
 
jim4silver said:
Scalper,

Hope you didn't buy that 1793 off Ebay. Lots of counterfeit from Chinese sellers in that type of coin.

Jim



Nope this coin was giving to me dad when he was really young along with 5 other large cents , I remember them in a drawer along time ago and just started looking for it , I did find the other ones but not the '93 ... I might have put in my box at the bank (hopefully) along with a bunch of baseball cards .... I just thought of that box the other day and there is a few diamond rings that I cant find and some other coins ....



Anyways thanks Jim for the heads up... I did see a article on the net where the Chinese are pumping out nice collectible coins ..there was a bunch of pics with tons and tons of coins ......
 
It is pretty scary what they are producing in those counterfeit factories. I like to collect old Liberty $20 gold double eagles, but have not purchased any since I saw that they are producing fairly good counterfeits. There have been articles about them counterfeiting NGC and PCGS slabs with different varieties of coins. From what I have read, those so far discovered have not been hard to spot due to different sized fonts and such on the labels. But give them time.....

The good thing about gold coins is that it is hard to make them the right size and weight without using real gold, due to the heavy weight density of gold. The only other metals they can use to fake the weight are tungsten and platinum. As far as tungsten goes, from what I have read it is difficult to work with so that making coins with gold plated tungstne cores is not really feasible in that the final product will not look like it should. However, I did see a photo of a large gold bar that was cut in two and it had a tungsten core and was covered with a layer or two of gold. I believe it was from Japan, but I could be off on the origin. No way they will use platinum since that costs more than gold.

Jim
 
LJ said:
I keep the plain jane silvers (40% & 90%) in wrappers I get from the bank. Can't beat the price.....ha!

The older coins & special ones go into the little 2x2 cardboard holders. Mine are all kept in safety deposit boxes so it is climate controlled.

What type of storage are you referring to?

Just to let you know, the safety deposit vaults are kept at very high humidity for the paper documents...if you store coins in one, make sure you put some silica gel in there with them....


-Paul
 
Where can you find the silica gel or a equally effective alternate?
 
Jsayre1234 said:
Where can you find the silica gel or a equally effective alternate?

Any of the coin mags have ads in them for this stuff.

As for the original question, my advice would be to get the single plastic holders. But if coin tubes are too expensive, then you really wouldn't go for that! Your coins are probably not worth protecting if you won't spend fifty cents each on them anyways. The tubes are much less even.
 
All of the more expensive coin holders and tubes are available used at most coin dealers. You won't find anyone selling used 2x2 papers but you may see sales of used 2x2 plastic flips. siegfried schlagrule
 
Fortunately for my laser welding system I have argon, a heavy gas that is inert. and a vacuum system, for the really good stuff I vacuum out the air, then flood with argon. Then I seal it. SILVER AND COPPER CANT OXIDIDIZE IF THERE IS NO OXYGEN!!

HAHHAHAHHA
 
JewelerDave the ultimate coin protecting mad scientist. That is a good Idea!
 
Jsayre1234 said:
JewelerDave the ultimate coin protecting mad scientist. That is a good Idea!
Actually, that is the way they store things like the Magna Carta, Constitution, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. Gotta protect them!
 
Thanks everyone for your responses. Has anyone ever heard of some type of stackable air-tight storage boxes / bins that I can vacuum seal? Is there an easy way to tell if a plastic bin is made of harmful (like pvc) or safe plastic?

Safety deposit boxes won't work because I'd have to purchase a bunch of them to store the quantity of coins I'm considering and therefore that screws up the whole economical aspect of it.
 
seattleMD said:
Thanks everyone for your responses. Has anyone ever heard of some type of stackable air-tight storage boxes / bins that I can vacuum seal? Is there an easy way to tell if a plastic bin is made of harmful (like pvc) or safe plastic?

Safety deposit boxes won't work because I'd have to purchase a bunch of them to store the quantity of coins I'm considering and therefore that screws up the whole economical aspect of it.

Thats pretty funny! :D
 
seattleMD said:
Safety deposit boxes won't work because I'd have to purchase a bunch of them to store the quantity of coins I'm considering and therefore that screws up the whole economical aspect of it.

Sounds like a good problem to have.....lol. Yes, there is a cost associated with safety deposit boxes but personally I don't mind paying for a little peace of mind.

I asked one of the large banks main branch about renting actual vault space once. I wanted to buy a safe...put my goodies in this safe and keep the safe in their vault. Simply...the answer was no. They didn't do that type of stuff. I kinda figured that would be the answer but oh well....didn't hurt to ask....ha!
 

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