There was a story on History Channel this morning where it was revealed that Swiss gold 20 Francs coins minted after 1945 have 10 X more mercury than is usually present in the coins. The suggestion is that the higher mercury levels may be a result of the Swiss having channeled through quite a bit of gold from Nazi Germany during WWII, and that the high mercury content could have come from dental gold taken from holocaust victims.

Eww.

No Swiss gold for me.

Thank goodness mine is pre-1940's.

OMG, would this mean people will be dumping Swiss coins minted after 1945 and hence meaning that their prices will rise significiantly compared to their pre WWII coins?

I don't have my Krause handy, but weren't they struck with a fixed date?

There were some 1947's, I know because I once had one. Most of my Swiss gold was dated in the 1920's.

Did you see how many '40s German or Swiss watches are available for sale on ebay from Russia? These are looted from dead German soldiers or confiscated from prisoners... So, what's the difference? Gold is gold.
Do you like the 8 Reales coins? Did you know that the silver and gold from South America was the cause of death of hundreds of thousands of Mayas and Incas? 500 years ago or 60 years ago, what's the difference?
Do you like Russian gold or platinum coins? Did you know how many Muzhiks were died in Siberian mines for it?
During WWII the gold reserve of Romanian National Bank increased with several tons, from Germany as payment for Romanian oil, meat and cereals. In 1945 Soviets confiscated all this gold. What for? To be returned to families of death Jews? I don't think so...
We live in pragmatic world... and Swiss banks are the champions!

Now that's a fast reply Banivechi I quite like that paragraph True, we can't do much about it, except mercury isn't something that you want because it's poisonous...

Hey! Don't swallow these coins!!!

The dental gold in Swiss coins story is not breaking news, it's been circulating for years. I don't think it will have any effect on prices. As Banivechi said, gold is gold.

Yup, can't agree any more... 99.99% gold + traces of mercury... hehehe

If the gold disolved with mercury is so poisonous, why it is used in dental crowns? Why these Jews not died intoxicated before to be fried by Nazis?

I read a book sometime saying that the swuisse voted a law that any art painting not claimed as stoolen became property of the new owner after 12 months wherever he got it
So we all kwow about the gold that was never returned to their original owners


I only like their watches

... and chocolat...

I once visited a factory in Austria were the manager showed a huge hall filled with antiquated compressors and told us those were used during the war
The Jews were first gassed by zyclon B then their hair was removed for bedding and dental gold of course then they were burned
I seem to remember they also made soap out of them

No being Belgian I think Belgian chocolate is the best in the world
I worked for Monsanto and had American visitors take kilos of chocolate and crates of beer

Eating chocolate and drinking beer???
Here doesn't exist Belgian chocolat for sale

Yes, there are the 1935 L-B dated coins, which were minted in 1945, 1946 and 1947. Actually if i'm not mistaken, these are the coins minted with gold from Germany, the 1947 and 1949 issues were struck later. Mine is a 1909B.

P.S.: Guylian chocolates, hummmm....


Jose

Tiffy, you are going to be contamined by mercury!!!

Touch it with caution!!!

I take it that you have a Swiss bank account!!!

Actually not!

I did a project on Swiss Banks and found that you can actually open one with as little as $3500, so you don't have to be a super-rich, reclusive millionaire!

As for the mercury point, I think it adds another facet to the coins, albeit a morbid one. To me, it would make them more interesting because of the specific history locked up in them.

Only $3500? Time to scam!

Yes but at times they have had negative intrest to keep us outsiders out

Of course... you pay to keep your identify secret...

Since a few years in Belgium if the account is secret it is illegal because on the yearly tax declaration you and your wife have to declare that there are no foreign bankaccounts and both have to sign this statement
Now since I have been on somebody's payroll all my life I have no undeclared income and the main reason over here to go to luxemburg or switzerland is to hide undeclared income

She could have the coin "slabbed"...


Jose

Depends. The story itself is not new at all - I think it came up about ten years ago. But at that time, the results were kind of vague. The institute that researched this (in California, I think) found significant differences in the mercury content of the Vrenelis dated 1935-L made shortly after WW2. The gold bars used for those coins were bought from various sources including the German Reichsbank. One can only guess where it came from. Have not read about any new research results concerning those 1935-L coins. But I suppose that, if there actually were any, they would have made it to the news here too.

@ageka: Well, in Germany it is not illegal to have bank accounts elsewhere, and you do not have to declare them. Over here the point is what you do with the money you make this way: If you take money to, say, Luxembourg, and then declare what you earn (ie. pay your taxes), then that is perfectly OK. However, if somebody "hides" bundles of cash in the car before driving back from LU (and gets caught), that is reason enough to assume that his intentions were not quite honest ;-)

Christian

I am sure quite a bit of gold has some story to it that can be discomforting. I just know I don't want anything that may have been associated with something along the lines that the 1935-1947 Swiss coins may have been. There are different circumstances, seizures etc which are associated with much of the gold around now. However the fact that some of it may or may not have been tied to being ripped out of dental work is just a bit over the top for my collecting tastes.

IMHO

I did not know the Vreneli story and the fact the dates were antidated
Vreneli's can be had at melt price at any money exchange agent here
in XF or better
67 Euro today plus one euro ( the mentioned prices are really interbank
and agencies will give one euro less and ask one euro more )

http://www.gold4ex.be/servlet/javaparser.c...st_or_new&lg=nl

@ tabbs
We can have foreign accounts no problem
We only have to declare them ( like for paying tax on heritage )

Thank goodness almost all of my gold is of the good old Yankee type!

Well, if anything about this story is true - and it seems we still don't know much beyond those fairly vague assumptions made in the mid-90s - , I would find that disgusting too. On the other hand I have always wondered why quite a few Americans are fascinated by Nazi memorabilia and collect them. 50 to 60 years ago that would probably have been a souvenir or trophy reminding of the beaten enemy, but these days? Anyway, I have more problems with people collecting bullion coins from, say, the PR China or North Korea. It's similar to what I think about precious metal coins from the GDR: Had I bought them before 1990, I would have in some way supported their economic and political system. If I buy them now, I don't ...

And yes, as you wrote, YMMV.

Christian

Ah, now I get it :-) Well, many "loopholes" have been closed anyway - within the EU the tax collecting authorities inform each other. And those countries that do not participate in that system - AT, LU and (outside the EU) for example Switzerland and Andorra - charge a flat tax from non-residents that at this stage is relatively low but will be increased ...

Christian

The people I have known that have this fascination with the nazi stuff are definitive and distinctive analysis of personalitiy traits anyway.

There are a lot of collectors of North Korea stuff in the USA, they cannot buy directly from NK of course, but they get it through Hong Kong or Canada. Purchases from there do nothing for NK citizens, only for the whack jobs in power, notably Kim Jong Il.

My father rode on horse back with two teams of 6 horses and two cannons to war
He spent the war as a guest on a german farm eating worms and gras and cats
Since I was born in 1947 I am partial to coins of that date

I've just put these coins and my list for several reasons;

Firstly my late great aunt was a Jew that fled Nazi Germany, her family were not so lucky and therefore i think the Germans that did this owe something back from what they stole. I find actively collecting such material is not showing disregard for all the lives lost and cut short but is claiming back from Nazi's what was never theirs to take in the first place. It to me is an act of defying everything they stood for.

Secondly the mention of mercury content got my interest straight away. I've long had a curious fascination with that metal. I've got a whole bottle full of the stuff here that i got off of ebay. (I'm looking for more)... Mercury i love it. Of course i don't handle it being that it's a killer (which i find even more fascinating, it's my adventurous streak you could say), but don't you find it fascinating the way light shines off of it's surface as it swishes about and runs in droplets here and there, the way the surface tension pulls it together, from four blobs to two, then to one. I must confess i like all things shiny, that's why i got into coins in the first place, shiny metals. But metals that move like liquids... oh baby!

I could happily play with a bottle of it for hours swishing it around and watching it... give me a massive gold bar or a bottle of mercury to play with and i know which i'd take home.

Gallium is the next one on the want list, because that metal melts at body temperature, so you can have all the fun with it you can have with mercury and you can also soldify it and melt it with ease... (plus it's reportedly not poisonous... although the jury is still out on that one at the moment) but i've got to get me some.

In Romania the mercury is prohibited material. After the fall of communist regime, many contrabandists were imprisoned for years because of red and white mercury. I think is something about bombs manufacturing. A 0.25 litre bottle filled with that material is a ticket for 6 stars hotel with "all included" here for years... I prefer the solid metals...

I collect elements though as part of my mineral collection so i have to have a sample for that. I also have a few mercury thermometers lying around. I request them specifically over the alcohol ones.

It certainly didn't kill my Granny and all of her ex-classmates who ran it around their palms.

I got a good allfashioned Torricelli mercury barometer mounted on a sculped oak board that has a good amount of mercury in the tube and buffer bottle
Strange enough the mounted thermometer is showy read liquid

My grandfather had a substantial quantity of the stuff when he was at work. This is probably going back to the 1960s back in the days either when he worked at the scrapyard, or when he was on the drain gang in the steelworks adjacent to my house. (Or maybe he was working on the bins at the time?) Anyhow there were some of those mercury coupling things or whatever they are (quite big things with mercury contained in glass cylinders) they'd been thrown out and when they were moving them they accidentally got broke. My grandfather gathered some up on a brick that was lying around (in the sunk in bit of the brick) and he kept it in the office. (Often as the doorstop) until it got knocked over one day and went down a drain.

Then there was my father who was fooling around in the science classroom at school (this was also the 1960s) when he knocked a big jarful of the stuff over and it went all over the floor. Well the teacher came in played hell, gave my father a ruler and told him to get the whole lot picked up. So he did.

It didn't do either of them much harm, nor the teacher who was still at the school when i turned up there 30 years later. Plus most of my aunts, uncles and my mother all handled the stuff at school and they used to throw it around. The Chemistry teacher also used to demonstrate the properties of mercury by pouring it out of the bottle and into a beaker and then sticking two rods into it to show how badly it conducted electricity (so we were all inhaling mercury vapour during that half hour or two it was sat on the desk in an open container). Not to mention the test tubes of the stuff they used to pass round that we shook about and threw around.

The physics teacher at school also had handled mercury at school infact his class decided to play a prank on their teacher and they poured a substantial amount into their teacher's coffee, the teacher soon disappeared to the toilet for the rest of the day, as mercury swallowed is a very good laxative. The guy survived unscathed.

Then there was my former geology teacher at college, she was teaching us in the same room she was taught in and she even showed us the filled in hole in the floor where she'd dropped a large mercury thermometer. It had picked up speed with the weight to such and extent it had gone through the florrboards on the first floor and into the groundfloor classroom below before shattering and spraying mercury everywhere.

Didn't do me much harm either when i dropped that mercury thermometer about 6 years ago... that was another ruler scooping up job. Thank god it wasn't on the carpet otherwise it would have had to come up.


Plus anyway i've been exposed to more mercury having fillings put in, removed and re-put in. I could taste the mercury for days after that last one went in. Generally as a poison i think it's a little overrated.


As a cumulative poison it's not too bad in small doses (as long as they are irregular and very infrequent) obviously daily contact (like fillings) allows the mercury toxins to build up and the body can't remove them (it takes the body a long time to drop them) and it builds up till it sends you mad and then kills you. The vapour is by far the worst (much worse than swallowing it since the digestive tract doesn't let mercury in very well) the lungs are more efficient at allowing mercury into the bloodstream. Mercury in it's elemental form though is much safer than it is in it's compound form. Stuff like Mercury Chloride and Mercurous chloride are absolutely deadly without question, one contact with stuff like that and you're as good as a gonner.


I heard of one sucidal guy who had decided to commit suicide by ingesting mercury, apparently it took him six months and a heck of alot of mercury to have the desired effects. Not recommended for instantanous death, but then again neither is cyanide which takes longer than you'd think and is absolutely brutal and is an agonising way to go.

Ah yes, the History Channel; "all Hitler, all the time" or if you prefer; "The History Channel... Where the Past Becomes a Lie".

The History Channel is as believable to me as FoxNews or CNN, or any of the other world socialist TV networks.

The process of refining gold from ore may involve the use of mercury. Dental gold in the US today is often applied, in the case of fillings/inlays, in the form of mercury amalgalm, but in pre-WWII Europe it wasn't. Gold foil was hammered into cavities or dental gold was applied as cast caps/bridges. HC writers are mostly hysterical pinkos. Take what you see there with a grain of salt.

They have been attacking Switzerland for years, pushing one pack of falsehoods after the other.

I am kind of surprised they have not gone full steam against Sweden yet, they sold iron ore to Germany.

Oh and the USA sold scrap iron to Japan, as well as petroleum prior to WWII, which allowed them to build up their military and then when the USA cut them off in 1940, they had enough resources to attack the USA in the effort to secure raw materials and oil from SE Asia.

If you think 20th century history is slanted on the History channel, you should really examine their treatment of the Civil War.

The UK version of the history channel seems much more balanced to me. Good and bad is examined on both sides, regardless of which side it is. It's much less of a 'goodie versus baddie' style.

Taking Nazi programmes for instance, they've interviewed surviving Jews from the holocaust camps that have varied in their opinions on the Nazis. So condem as you'd expect, others forgive and say they can't let their past haunt them forever.

They've had both historians and German citizens on that have praised the Nazis (i don't mean praising them for murdering everyone) but rathermore for the way Hitler managed to turn around the Germany economy and how he was a good influence on German affairs at the beginning before he (or rather Himmler and crew) turned out to be a very, very big and devastating mistake for Germany and for the world.

The UK variant tries to detach itself from over-indulging in human emotions whilst at the same time trying to remain ethical. Of course this is difficult with the Nazi regime.


Having watched programmes on the British Empire (which i usually try and avoid as they're dull) the achievements of the Brits are discussed equally with the failures and the consequences both good and bad for both Britain and the colonies concerned.

Same with that programme on Ghengis Khan the other day... it was quite quick to defend him on behalf of the Mongolian Empire's stance showing how he helped facilitate trade from one side of Asia to the other and how well he treat the cities that submitted to him. Meanwhile it also took the stance of some of the conquered such as Russia that suffered heavily where many millions were massacred by the Mongolian forces and how in Russia he's seen as pure evil compare to how he's seen in other places in the world.

This is how history should be objective, removed.

Yes, that's what really made me begin to dislike the HC. HC International has some better programming such as the British archaeological shows which are really pretty good. One such show featured excavation of the site of a Roman fort. There were some very nice coins among the artifacts they displayed for viewing on that one.

I think that the British programming mentioned by Aethling is part of what I've seen on HCI. Entertaining stuff without the political slant of the HC's US programming.

What i don't get though Ed is that many of the programmes we get are actually made by Americans (much of the Egypt and Biblical stuff at any rate) and they still manage to keep it fairly neutral, showing both sides! Surely these would be shown on the US variant as well?

Ah British archaeological, must be Time Team... good programme (i say that grudgingly as i have conflicting views on that one, it's good and it's not).

Usually on Sunday morns you can catch HCI, there was a fascinating programme on the English Civil War about 2 months ago that I tuned in during the whole series. The English Civil War is amazing for the dimensions of the conflict, including religion, the monarchy, republicanism etc. And it really didn't end the religious conflict, that only was settled in 1689.

Even that's optimistic... In Ireland you could say it was never sorted. Cromwell is hated in some parts of Ireland, as is William III.

Even in Scotland the religion issue can be a touchy subject, depending on whether you are Catholic or Protestant influences what football team you support.


Even in England the religious issue was tenative right through into the mid-late Victorian period, Catholic politicians didn't get as far as Protestant ones. And there was still hostility around against Catholics at the time. The biggest factor in finally subsiding religious unrest in England was that the country became increasingly secularised. It's probably one of the most secular countries going in general terms, i've never yet met a family that has to say grace before lunch. I certainly wouldn't.

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Time to split?