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QM, I have an immense pile of insulators I've picked up in my journeys. I can't help myself -- I really like the way they look, and they remind of all the railroads on which I've worked. I came back from a recent trip with over 50 packed into a suitcase -- only one was broken when I arrived! <br /> <br />Only one of my insulators has cash value, by the way. To be valuable, the number known to be in existence has to be less than about 1,000, and to get into big money, the number in existence has to be in the teens or below. When they're pretty, and in perfect shape, and the number known to exist is maybe three or four, the price soars. Because they're glass, and glass is plastic when its heated, forgeries are very common and very difficult to detect. I have never bought an insulator, and never will -- the fun is in finding them, and in the places I find them. <br /> <br />What I collect are commons. "Real collectors" would regard 99% of my collection as complete junk, total landfill material. Not worth even 25 cents each. But I like them because they ARE commons. Railroads are all about the ordinary and everyday. When I glance up at a row of aqua Hemingray 42s (a type of which railroads must have bought about one billion), I recall being out in West Texas on the T&P on a perfectly still spring day, or in Wyoming with the wind moaning through the lines along the UP main. <br /> <br />The only one I have that's rare is of a type only made between 1870-72. The particular example was used on the UP telegraph line in Wyoming. I spotted it laying on top of the dirt below a fill. Apparently it had been buried in the mud for decades until a wet spring, and a cow kicked it up walking by. It's worth all of $125! <br /> <br />Anyway, I wouldn't worry. Glass and ceramic are biologically inert and inactive, highly resistant to leaching, and in fact, vitrification -- turning something into glass -- is precisely the method used to turn many forms of nuclear waste into a brick that's harmless and safe forever. You could lick one for the rest of your life with perfect safety. <br /> <br />The colors result from slight metallic impurities: <br />green-aqua = iron <br />amethyst = manganese <br />cobalt = blue <br />copper = dark red <br />nickel = blue to violet to black <br />titanium = yellow-brown <br />silver = orange-red <br />selenium = clear (it decolorizes by counteracting the influence of iron) <br /> <br />While many of these metals are poisons, the only way you could ingest enough quantity to harm you is to grind a large number of insulators into a powder and eat the powder. I think if you want to eat several hundred powdered insulators, heavy metal poisoning might be the least of your concerns. These metals won't leach out of the glass, even in strong acids or alkali solutions, even with a lot of heat and pressure. <br /> <br />OS <br /> <br />P.S.: this is what a Hemingray 42 looks like: <br /> <br />http://www.insulators.com/general/profiles/154hemi.htm <br />
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