Uranium Glass - What It Is, How To Spot It, and Current Market Value 

Ooo! I love that tip; super valuable :)

This is spot on. I always thought the stuff was cool, but never looked for any. I did today. Took me 5 minutes to find a piece. Measuring cup. Stood out like a sore thumb and I knew exactly what it was before hitting it with my UV light. It'll look really solid next to other florescent minerals.

That's Vaseline glass

No Vaseline glass is yellow tinged not milky!!

Vaseline glass is uranium glass, just a different term.

That's huge! Thanks for teaching me :D

that's what ive experienced, a false positive for uranium. I just made my first mistake with this. it was an expensive one.

Learned this too after my first few trips through the thrift stores

💯👌

After a year im going to have to buy another house to store it all. I must be in a good area for it.

@@pokerdealer2003 lol! What state are you in?

@@IamErikaW Washington

Omg since this vid I have been so lucky, I seriously need to catch some of my goodwill finds on video.

Thank you for watching and commenting 😊 Yes uranium glass is a lot of fun to collect! My next goal on the list is to find a uranium glass sculpture; I think that would be so cool to display with a permanent UV fixture illuminating it 😄

☢

Strange how my beta gamma, geiger counter goes nuts on fiesta, where a normal uranium glass

@@Rafficarian Fiesta ware just has a lot more Uranium in it. Glass is usually around 2% Uranium by mass, where ceramic glaze is typically closer to 15-20%.

Kind words 🙏 Thanks for watching, means a lot

right?! It's pretty rad......get it? 😂

Thank you! :) No, I think drawing definite dates like that is hard to do. I would say that the mid 1800s is when we start to see an increase in usage of uranium in the glass industry, but the use of uranium in glass making has been around for longer than that. Personally, as a rule of thumb, I date uranium glass as 1940s or earlier, as the ban on uranium in commercial production entered into effect in the early 40s. This ban was later lifted (late 50s I believe) , but the process of making glass with uranium, on a mass scale, was never really brought back. Sure, you can probably find some pieces that were made post-ban, but I'd wager to say that this production would be on a super small scale. Actually as I'm writing this, I realize that I'm just speaking from an American perspective; I'm not sure what the rest of the world did or didn't do in terms of banning uranium in glass production, or how individual countries regulated the use of uranium?? So yeah haha, I guess that would be another interesting rabbit hole to explore!

It must be a SAVERS store lol They are horrible!

3000??? I feel like that's not safe to drink from

ohhhh very interesting!! Thank you for that piece of information :)

@@TimelessMerchant There is a Nile Red video on making Uranium Glass. I suggest you watch it, it also holds a lot of information on actually how it's made (and on some uranium handling methods). My comment may have made it sound like it's not very safe. However, if you handle it occasionaly and do not let any dust or particulate come off of it, it is perfectly fine. He also gives exact figures. I strongly recommend you watch his video. You made a nice video nevertheless and I really enjoyed it!

@@Dinnye01 This is awesome information; thanks again, and I'll definitely check out the video! Thanks for watching, means a lot :D

Yes, it does work. 🙂

It does but I like to pop the item into the shade if I can

If it's good it will light up bright with even a dim uv pen light.

Thanks for watching & commenting :)

Oh niceeee 🙂 I didn't even know that Magnesium would light up. Thanks for the info/correction, love learning new stuff from you guys!

I try to stay away from antique store owners because they're also are in the game of buying low and selling high Uranium glass.

Based on personal experience and knowledge, I consider uranium glass safe to use. But risk tolerance vary and knowledge about certain topics change as time goes on, so I would recommend you to do your own due diligence; don't trust random internet strangers haha 😅

oo thanks for correction, good catch! Thank you :)

The high percentage Uranium glass is easy to tell apart from the low. Glass with a high concentration of Uranium in it will look opaque, where as the 2-3% stuff is clear.

I wish I was one 😂

That would be overkill, even for chipped fiesta ware. Maybe if the glaze were grinded into a powder, but that would already be illegal.

😂 I had to Google the name! Never heard that one!

Uranium is one of the least radioactive isotopes. Its half-life is 4 and a half billion years.

Phones don't put out the same radiation

please say you are just trolling and not really this ignorant

@@FenianAn1mal I’m really that ignorant. I never put the phone next to my head. Colbalt glass and mercury silver glass ornaments ……. Safety first

You’d need an RFR/EMR meter to measure the hazard of these. But, non-ionizing radiation (wireless devices) ≠ ionizing radiation (radioactive elements), but yes, both bad for your health.

@@HPG45 The microwave band used by cellphones is of no consequence to your health.

You do not need a PhD in nuclear physics to collect or handle glassware made with uranium. You can LITERALLY find any information on Google. If you're afraid of uranium glass consider the following: do not go outside (radiation from sun), get rid of certain household appliances, stay away from flying, and make sure you never enter a radon free basement without a hazmat suit.

Oh no, it releases alpha particles! Alpha particles that can't even peneteate your skin! And an extremely, stupidly small amount of radon that should almost entirely remain trapped in the glass as well! What a horror!

Look up Galen Windsor

His life, he's a competent adult. It's honestly minimal risk as long as he's not eating off them everyday for prolonged periods. Radium glass, not great, not terrible either. This is interesting content. Return to your lead shielded bubble wrapped safe space. No, you probably shouldn't expose yourself to radiation recreationally, HOWEVER, this honestly isn't that dangerous. It's the prolonged exposure, mainly through eating off of radioactive sources, that gets you. He's an amateur sure, but it's radium glass. It's like collecting radium watches. Shoot ppl used to wear them 24/7 and it's not like they ended up like the radium girls. No it's not great, but it's NOT terrible. But if you're some sort of expert (if you were, then you wouldn't freak out and Karen out on this guy) then why don't you save us from our ignorance then? Life is full of toxic exposure, I've found the most toxicity comes from narcissistic individuals tbh...

Uranium glassware doesn't produce any appreciable amount of radon gas, only natural Uranium such as its ores will produce that. Before Uranium is used to make the glass it is chemically purified, meaning they remove all of the daughter isotopes from it. This means the only radioactive element being added to the glass is Uranium. The primary isotope, U-238, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Such a long half-life means that Uranium will only experience around 12,400 decays per second. Keep in mind that a single glass can contain trillions of atoms, so it is an extreemly small percentage that will decay at any one time. When U-238 decays it becomes Th-234 and then Pa-234, which both have short half-lives. Once Pa-234 decays it becomes U-234, which has another long half-life at 245,000 years. Upon decaying again it will become Th-230, which has another long half-life at over 75,000 years. It takes nearly one million years for Th-230 to reach its equilibrium point in the Uranium glass (the point where it will emit the maximum amount of Radon), on a human time scale the amount of Radon coming off the glass is practically zero.

Yes, it's literally the SAME MATERIAL. This is just glass with a percentage point or two of U-238, plus trace amounts of U-235. If you bought a few hundred kilograms of uranium glass from pre-1948 and chemically separated out the uranium, you could indeed create a fuel pellet for a CANDU nuclear reactor. Any other civilian reactor would just need a bit more U-235 in the mix.

@@MinSredMash lol the only correct thing you said there was about the CANDU design. It's clear you have little to no understanding of wtf you said. typical uranium glass contains about 2% of uranium in its oxide form....of that 2% less than 1% of it is u235. you would need alot more than a few hundred kg to refine into something useful for reactor fueling. and again it is not the same material used in nuclear weps or most reactors.

@@FenianAn1mal Everything I said was correct, "lol". Read my comment carefully. I said CANDU fuel *pellet*. Do you know how tiny a fuel pellet is? It is just 200 grams of uranium. So 2% of several hundred kilos of glass is enough uranium for one pellet. You also appear to be ignorant of the fact that the CANDU uses *unenriched* uranium, so the natural U-235 content is sufficient. Nice try attempting to look smart on the internet, better luck next time.