georger

I've been curious about purple staining. I know that iodine tests are used to detect high starch levels in counterfeit bills. The discolored Ingram bills seem to have purple staining. I was wondering if there's any database on what causes different types of staining to the flax/cotton US bills. Try zooming in on these. Some have the holes which I assumed were insect. You can zoom in a lot with these and maintain resolution. Yes. I will give what expertise I have. The true experts would be in the Treasury Dept or in the numismatic community, or Soetheby's, etc. Paper money is very specific in paper, dies, and techniques, aging, etc. while also following the general rules of entropy. These are good images. This is wet money vs dry money decomposition. I see no sign of the money having been given a trace element or dye for tracing from its origin before Cooper. You see obvious (wet) oxydisation (yellow green), some signs of mildew (fungal) dark blackish-grey staining, and the violet suggests salt(s) contamination to my eye.Spectroscopy of the paper would answer all these questions. I know of no website with a data base which specifically addresses these issues. The holes are interesting but also the areas of degeneration peripheral on each bill. A palentologist might make some sense of this, but more probably there were larvae and other artifacts which came along with the stacks of bills and their flakes when found - which might confirm nothing more than the money was found where it was found, and had been in-situ for some time. One last thing, I see no signs of stress in the money. By this I mean a uniform deformation of the money (through the bills) as from a collision or severe impact which carries a stress or shock wave through an object (even a stack of paper or money or soft tissue). A number of years ago I saw a close photo of the stacks of money the Ingrams brought in, and then a photos of the money spread out, and I looked for any sign of stress or deformation in the bills (one to the others), and I could find none. I wondered about this vs. the options of the money have dropped from the sky and hit earth, or been with Cooper hitting earth or water at high velocity (eg. 32ft sec/sec). Now, a UV and possibly an IR scan of the money might find stress pattern? Its a possibility but of course all of the money is now distributed and far flung so no group analysis can be done. A few bills could still be examined, just to say you did it! Thank you Snowmman.

Thanks for the reply. Obviously the Seattle PI map of Tena Bar is wrong. I attached a few correct which show the outline of the river from Washougal out beyond Tena Bar. I will assume the area opposite Tena Bar was searched, for some distance up and down stream. Tena Bar sits on the right hand side of the river and even juts out (in dry periods) into a free flow field following the rather sharp right hand curve in the Columbia, prior to the channel involving Tena Bar. (Fast deeper water flows to the outside of an arc, Slow more shallow water to the inside of an arc). These remarks must be interpreted in the context of the Columbia being a wide river; during flood even wider. But the the principles of flow and deposition are the same. Debris in this situation would collect on the inside of the curve, then wash into the channel or even to the opposte side depending on velocity and volume of flow, then be conveyed downstream some conveying to the sides (shorelines), again depending on time of year and velocity and flow. The problem is "entry point" (above, from sides proximate to Tena Bar, or further upstream as in the Washougal hypothesis.) There may also be a fourth option, as I read the maps, which is the Vancouver Lake area upstream and not too far behind Tena Bar. If Tena Bar is affected by overflow from Vancouver Lake then that is a possible entry point, also. I seriously doubt Tena Bar was the original deposit site unless by accident money was dropped or buried further inland and it washed or eroded to that location, apparently after dredging operations. Only two things come to mind which might shed light on this matter. I notice what appear to be 'worm holes' in the money? I wonder if these holes penetrated the total stacks of bills or were just superficial. Different worms leave different (hole) tracks and patterns, which might help distinguish if money spent its time on land vs in the water. BTW, the outer areas of the bills show relative uniform wear in terms of erosion, rolling, and decay. Notice the curved wear patterns at both ends of each bill. This is consistent with uniform wear from burying vs one specific side of the bills being subject to directional wear (as bills sitting in stream wash). I tend to agree with the poster who points to the lack of staining from water - in fact colour in several bills is still very bright. But the wear patterns suggest a uniform state of decay consistent with burying, unless I am missing something. Lastly, had it been me, I would have had some of these bills analysed under a microscope simply on the chance some clue in pollen, bacteria, or mineral deposits might turn up. In addition, I would have taken samples of some of these bills (outisde of stack vs inside protected in stack) and run some mass spectroscopy on the samples, just to see what turned up. You never know. Clues like this might shed light on their history. That's enough for now - and thank you. I wish you all great luck in this quest. George

First Time Posting: had to ue reply option because I find no 'post' option, so hope whatever transgression Ive made it will be accepted - ON A DIFFERENT NOTE: Where exactly IS Tena's Bar? Or 'Tina Bar'. I have the longitude & latitude which brings my eye to a totally different location than that published by the Seattle Post Intelligencer. PI photo atatched (I hope). Thanks for any clarification. My reason for wishing to know is hydrological-geological... thanks for any help. May I also what photo fileformat is taken here: jpegs, bmp's, gif's ??? Let me see if I can do this now - the magic of computers and forae-intelligencers!