Yesterday, while digging through a box of my stuff that has been in storage for 15 years, I happened upon a 1948 Roosevelt dime in a blue plastic holder from the N. Y. World's fair in the mid 60's.

As I said, I am not sure where I got this and when I posted about it yesterday I didn't know much about it but for what the blue plastic holder told me. So I put the question to anyone reading, do you know anything about this dime?

#SHARINGISCARING

To be fair she did send me some info later on discord, in this interesting article. Turns out irradiating dime was a thing for a hot minute in the 50's & 60's. It was mostly done at the American Museum of Science and Energy

Here is a little something from that article:

The irradiator works as follows: A mixture of radioactive antimony and beryllium is enclosed in a lead container. Gamma rays from the antimony are absorbed by the beryllium atoms and a neutron is expelled by the beryllium atom in the process.

These neutrons, having no electrical charge, penetrate silver atoms in the dime. Instead of remaining normal silver-109, they become radioactive silver-110. After irradiation, the dime is dropped out through a slot in the lead container and rests momentarily before a Geiger tube so that its radioactivity may be demonstrated. It is then encased in the souvenir container. Radioactive silver, with a half-life of 22 seconds, decays rapidly to cadmium-110 (In 22 seconds, half of the radioactivity in each dime is gone, in another 22 seconds half the remainder goes, and so on until all the silver-110 has become cadmium). Only an exceedingly minute fraction of the silver atoms have been made radioactive.

So it would seem that most dime were irradiated at the museum in the 50's but the machine did travel to the world's fair in New York in 1964. I seem to remember my dad talking about that fair so I ent him a message this morning.

:)

Have a great day!