Talk:Element collecting

Regarding how many elements you can collect

In principle, with an unlimited budget and unlimited license to break laws, you can get a macroscopic sample of all of the first 99 (or perhaps 100) elements, except astatine and francium. In practice, most element collectors are sensible enough to stop at 83 (the stable 81, plus thorium and uranium), perhaps cheating with very impure samples of the other ones to complete the sequence from atomic number 1 to 92. The usual way to get around the astatine problem, for example, is to take a chunk of uranium ore, since astatine will be in the decay chain of uranium. Double sharp (talk) 04:39, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

...or, more simply put, most element collectors only bother trying to collect the primordial elements (not counting Pu, whose primordial status is disputed and is of very questionable legality to possess). Double sharp (talk) 04:35, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

The one addition that the most dedicated – i.e. Theodore Gray – have tried is technetium, because of its very long half-life, legality to possess (unlike the actinides that aren't thorium and uranium), and decay to clean stability at molybdenum or ruthenium instead of the cascade of gamma emitters that thorium passes through on its way to stable lead. Double sharp (talk) 15:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)