Why radioactive toothpaste? Well, you have to remember that for a few decades after radioactivity was discovered, people thought it was good for you. It was new, invisible and powerful, and the public imagination filed it under “health” rather than “danger.” It was a strange time in radioactive history as it was possible to buy radioactive water, face cream, and so on…

Auergesellschaft’s real business was gas lamp mantles, the little fabric hoods in old gas lamps that glow when heated. To make them shine, they used a faintly radioactive metal called thorium. But processing thorium leaves you with a lot of slightly radioactive leftover material. Some genius looked at that waste material and asked themselves the unconventional question: why not put it in toothpaste and sell it as a health product to the Nazi war machine?

So they did. The radiation, the tube cheerfully claimed, would strengthen your teeth and gums, kill bacteria, and fill your cells with “new life energy.” None of which is true, in fact the beautifully opposite of true - but it sold.

As the Allies advanced, Auergesellschaft seized a French firm's entire thorium supply and shipped it to Germany just before Paris was liberated. For the Allies, they feared the worst. Could the Germans be stockpiling thorium for a bomb? When they finally tracked it down and interrogated the company's men, an absurd truth was revealed… the thorium wasn't for a weapon at all. The company, seeing its wartime contracts about to vanish, had decided its future lay in cosmetics, and was hoarding thorium to corner the postwar market in radioactive toothpaste. And so this amusingly became known as "Operation Toothpaste"!

What it actually says on the tube

The back of a Doramad tube carries the full sales pitch. In the original German, it reads:

Was leistet Doramad? Durch ihre radioaktive Strahlung steigert sie die Abwehrkräfte von Zahn u. Zahnfleisch. Die Zellen werden mit neuer Lebensenergie geladen, die Bakterien in ihrer zerstörenden Wirksamkeit gehemmt. Daher die vorzügliche Vorbeugungs- und Heilwirkung bei Zahnfleischerkrankungen. Poliert den Schmelz aufs Schonendste weiß und glänzend. Hindert Zahnsteinansatz.

Which translates, more or less, as:

What does Doramad do? Through its radioactive radiation it strengthens the defences of the teeth and gums. The cells are charged with fresh life-energy; bacteria are checked in their destructive work. Hence its excellent preventive and healing action against gum disease. It polishes the enamel white and gleaming in the gentlest possible way. And it stops the build-up of tartar.

The only claim that carries truth is preventing tartar, totally unrelated to radioactivity. Everything else is wishful thinking unique to the era of radioactive quackery.

My tube of Dormad toothpaste

Sitting on my desk is a battered aluminium tube of toothpaste. Its last owner, one of several hundred thousand German soldiers, had run out of road.

The Red Army had punched through to the Baltic coast, and what had been Army Group North found itself pinned against the sea in a corner of western Latvia known to history as the Courland Pocket. They were cut off - no retreat, no relief, the war visibly lost - and yet they did not surrender. For seven months, through six grinding battles and a Baltic winter, close to 200,000 men held a shrinking scrap of coastline while the rest of the Reich collapsed. They were among the very last German forces anywhere to lay down their arms, finally capitulating in May 1945, after the war in Europe was officially over.

The army surrendered and left Baltic relic hunters 80 years later a rich hunting ground of personal army kits, abandoned in foxholes and dugouts, and field hospitals. Mess tins. Razors. Buttons. And, tucked into a great many wash kits, a small aluminium tube of toothpaste.

And that is how an object that once sat in a doomed soldier’s wash kit on the Eastern Front came to be sitting, today, on a desk in Surrey, sitting next to a radiation detector. A man squeezed the last usable smear out of this tube, probably sometime in 1944, in dire circumstances. The toothpaste tube outlasted him, the army, the Nazis, and the century, only to end up as the subject of a Substack article in 2026. Bizarre.

This tube is still radioactive

If you read about Doramad toothpaste elsewhere online, you’ll spot people saying that: it contained thorium, so it was radioactive. A couple of the more careful websites go one step further and say a laboratory once confirmed trace thorium by analysis. I went looking and could not find a single person who had actually pointed a detector at one of these tubes and published what came back.

That’s a small, oddly persistent, perhaps niche gap on the internet. So I decided to close it.

First, a fair warning about why this is harder than it sounds. If you wave a basic Geiger counter - the clicking kind everyone pictures - over an empty Doramad tube, you get nothing. The seller of mine told me as much. The amount of radioactive material left clinging inside an empty tube is so tiny that, by sheer loudness, it doesn’t rise above the natural background radiation that’s around all of us, all the time.

So I needed to use a more capable instrument that does something cleverer. Rather than just counting how much radiation arrives, it sorts it by type - detecting the actual isotopes. Every radioactive element gives off radiation at its own specific set of energies; together they form a kind of barcode, unique to that element and its decay products.

The method is simple. I recorded an hour of my standard background radiation using my Radiacode 102 to get a picture of natural radioactive hum of the room with no tube present. Then I recorded an hour of the tube sitting next to the detector. You can then subtract the room from the tube and whatever was left could only have come from the tube itself.

For the first half hour, it looked like the Geiger counter had been right - the tube’s signal was so faint it was almost lost in the noise. But as the minutes piled up, something emerged from the static: a clean, repeating pattern of peaks, each one landing exactly where thorium’s particular barcode says it should. A specific, identifiable signature and not just one line but several, from more than one stage of thorium’s slow radioactive decay, all sitting in their correct places.

The spectrum for the trained eye shows that the radioactivity of thorium is still ticking away inside the empty tube, likely dried to the walls of the aluminium, somehow having survived 80 years in the mud.

Is it dangerous?

No. I’ll tell my mates that I have “Nazi radioactive toothpaste recovered from a battlefield”, but the tube itself gives off no more radiation than the room it’s in. You can hold it, handle it, photograph it, and you’ll receive nothing. Thorium’s radiation is the easily-stopped kind: your skin blocks it, and so does the aluminium wall of the tube itself.

The only real rule - the same one that governs everything in this unique hobby - is the boring, sensible one: don’t eat it. Don’t scrape the residue out and breathe the dust. Wash your hands after handling it. Do that, and an empty Doramad tube is one of the safest radioactive curiosities you could own.

“Doramad was radioactive” has been repeated for decades as received internet wisdom. A cheap Geiger counter says there’s nothing here, but two hours of patience says this tube does still emit something, quietly decaying, exactly as it has for 80 years.

If you’d like the technical detail - the actual spectra, the specific peaks I identified, drop a comment or message.

The property is Coleton Fishacre, the Jazz Age country retreat of Rupert D’Oyly Carte - son of the Richard D’Oyly Carte who gave the world Gilbert and Sullivan and the Savoy Hotel - and his wife Lady Dorothy. Built between 1923 and 1926 by Oswald Milne, an early disciple of Lutyens, it sits in a coastal valley above Pudcombe Cove on the south Devon coast. This is an Art Deco property and the National Trust fitted the rooms appropriately.

The family only got a handful of happy years here before the saga turned sad. Their son was killed in a car accident in Switzerland in the early 1930s, the marriage did not survive it, and the estate was eventually sold to a motor trader called Rowland Smith in 1949. His widow, Freda, gifted it to the National Trust in 1982; a National Trust volunteer told me the house was valued at around £400,000 back then.

For readers outside the UK: the National Trust is a charity that looks after hundreds of historic houses, gardens and great swathes of coastline, opening them to the public and preserving them in perpetuity. Today Coleton Fishacre is preserved as a 1920s time capsule: a pianist plays in the lounge, sound beautifully travels around the property, only outmatched by the sea views from nearly every window, and - as I was about to discover - a genuinely interesting radiological character.

The courtyard surprise

I had barely cleared the threshold of the courtyard when the Radiacode started screaming. UK background runs at roughly 0.10 µSv/h on a normal day and I was seeing double that. Not alarming. Not even particularly noteworthy in absolute terms. But conspicuous, consistent, and decidedly not coming from anything I had brought with me.

The culprit was the stone. Granite is naturally radioactive - it carries trace uranium and thorium, and their decay chains throw off enough gamma to nudge a sensitive scintillator well above background. The local stone here, “quarried from the garden” as the guidebooks proudly note, is doing exactly what granite always does.

The effect followed me indoors, though more meekly. Internal readings were softer than the courtyard but still a touch elevated - I couldn’t work out if the house used granite throughout or if I was still picking up elevated readings from outside the property.

Uranium glass, quietly displayed

Then came the glass. Coleton Fishacre is decorated almost entirely in period, and the 1920s and 30s were, of course, the golden window for uranium glass in Britain. Once you have your eye in for the look - that slightly greasy, oily-yellow translucence, or the more honest neon green of the pressed pieces - you start spotting it everywhere: on side tables, on dressing tables, on the corner of a mantelpiece. Using a UV torch, a couple of pieces honestly glowed back.

The vases

The find of the day, however, was a pair of vases. They were displayed in the same room, and they had that unmistakable deep-orange, sandy, almost lava-like glaze of an early twentieth-century uranium-oxide ceramic - clearly a uranium glaze.

Both vases registered around 2.78 kCPM on contact - already a clear, decisive step above anything else in the room.

For the usual reassurance, a chest X-ray is around 14 µSv as a single shot, and a return transatlantic flight roughly 100 µSv. Even pressed up against the hotter of the two for a full minute, the dose you’re collecting is trivial. These are not health hazards. They are, however, thrilling - two objects sitting unremarked in a Devon country house, and I’m not sure even the volunteers realised what they were.

Worth the detour

If you’re curious about radioactive antiques, then Coleton Fishacre is certainly worth the trip. The architecture is genuinely beautiful, the gardens are packed with subtropical beauty, and the D’Oyly Carte story is the kind of melancholy English saga that lodges in the brain. But with a Radiacode in your pocket and a UV torch in the other, the house quietly upgrades itself further: it is very much alive and glowing with radioactivity.

The collection had belonged to a lady, now sadly passed, who had spent many years building a careful and clearly much-loved set of vintage Fiestaware. Every colour was represented, neatly arranged, the work of someone who genuinely treasured it. I acquired a good part of the collection at an estate sale here in the UK, drawn in simply by the beauty of the pieces and a long-standing weakness for Art Deco dinnerware. Some of her Fiestaware was radioactive. I rather suspect she never knew.

That, for me, is the thrill of this hobby.

The uranium hiding in plain sight

Most of the collection is exactly what it appears to be: lovely, inert pottery. But among it were the pieces that matter to a collector like me, the genuine vintage “radioactive red”, that famous orange-red Fiesta glaze.

The surface of one red bowl reads around 4 usv/h (microsieverts) an hour on my Radiacode, roughly forty times background radiation with the probe held against it. There is ivory in the set as well, which tends to surprise people, because the ivory glaze also contains uranium and reads comfortably above background. It is often the plainest looking piece that proves the most active.

Why is Fiestaware red radioactive?

The answer lies in the glaze. To achieve those vivid colours, the Homer Laughlin China Company added uranium oxide. At the time, uranium was inexpensive and abundant, for the simple reason that very few people wanted it.

The prize of the age was radium. Extracting a single gram of it required several tonnes of uranium, and so the radium boom of the early twentieth century left behind enormous quantities of surplus uranium with little obvious purpose. Much of it was sold cheaply to the glass and ceramics trade as a colourant.

The history then takes a sharper turn. The radioactive reds were produced from 1936 until 1943, when the United States government requisitioned the nation’s uranium for the Manhattan Project. Fiestaware red disappeared. It returned in 1959, now made with depleted uranium, and was retired for good around 1972. Modern Fiestaware contains none at all, so every piece from this estate is unmistakably vintage.

Is radioactive Fiestaware safe to own?

This is the question I am asked most. Forty times background sounds alarming, but two things make it far less so. Radiation falls away quickly with distance: move half a metre from the bowl and the reading drops to barely above background. And even held against the skin for a full day, a piece would deliver roughly the same dose as two weeks of the natural background radiation we all live in. A single long-haul flight would give you more.

The real precautions are straightforward. Do not eat or drink from these pieces, as acidic foods such as tomato or citrus can leach uranium from the glaze into the food, and uranium is a toxic heavy metal as well as a radioactive one. And do not use chipped or damaged items, since a broken glaze can shed particles that are easily inhaled. Kept intact and on display, they are entirely safe to enjoy.

The principle, as ever on this blog, is a simple one. Respect it, do not fear it.

A second life for the collection

There is something rather satisfying in the thought that these pieces have found a second life, measured and understood rather than left to gather dust in a cupboard. Do take a look, and let me know in the comments what you would like me to measure next.

Despite being widely regarded as the most radioactive mine adit in Devon - and, after South Terras in Cornwall, arguably the second most radioactive in the UK - it is genuinely hard to find. Which feels strange for a site that was briefly reported in The Times, Nature, and the local Devon press.

Fact sheet…

• Location: Near Hapstead, just west of Buckfastleigh, South Devon

• Worked: Adit driven 1918–1920; earlier copper trials in the 19th century on the same estate

• Discovered: Pitchblende lode reported in The Times on 18 January 1919

• Primary minerals: Pitchblende (uraninite), with coffinite, nickel, cobalt, bismuth, copper and arsenic minerals

• Reported ore grade (1919): Over 26% uranium oxide - about thirteen times richer than the American ore being imported at the time

• My reading at the adit entrance: 0.22 µSv/h on the Radiacode (roughly 1.5–2× typical UK natural background)

• Published radon level inside the adit: up to 37,000 Bq/m³ (Gillmore et al., 2001) - about 185× the UK domestic action level

A 1919 sensation

Kingswood mine was originally on the owned estate of Friend Sykes, the man who would later become better known as one of the founders of the British organic farming movement and an early Soil Association member. In 1919, however, he was Lord of the Manor of Brooke Mainbow and - according to contemporary press accounts collected by Legendary Dartmoor - a chemical engineer who had previously made his name producing acetone for the war effort, with a sideline in amateur geology.

Apparently, whilst out shooting one day in King’s Wood, Sykes spotted an interesting outcrop, eventually bringing a former miner named Isaac Hendy out of retirement at about 80 years old to act as mine captain, and driving an adit from the valley floor into the hillside. After more than a year of work and a fair amount of local mockery, a charge blew out a piece of quartz with strange black markings. Sykes recognised it as carrying nickel, cobalt and bismuth - the calling-card minerals for pitchblende. A sample was taken to University College London, where a Dr Henry Terry analysed it and confirmed the uranium oxide content of over 26%.

The find was significant enough that Nature ran a short note in 1919 recording it as the first time pitchblende ore had been recorded from Devon, citing The Times of 18 January 1919 as the original source. The Ministry of Munitions’ Mineral Resources Development Department got involved, sending the mineralogist Lieutenant Arthur Russell - later Sir Arthur Russell, 6th Baronet, and arguably the most important British mineral collector of the 20th century - to inspect the workings. Russell’s original report on Kingswood is still held at the National Archives, and he later presented his findings as a paper, “On a discovery of pitchblende at Kingswood mine, Buckfastleigh”, to the Mineralogical Society in February 1922. The opinion of Professor J. Norman Collie of UCL - Sir William Ramsay’s collaborator on the isolation of argon and helium, both of which had involved pitchblende - was also sought, along with that of a director of what was then the UK’s only radium factory.

Why it never paid

For a brief moment, Sykes was sitting on what looked like a fortune. Radium at the time was selling for around £400,000 an ounce, and contemporary press estimates of the value of ore already sitting in the dumps from earlier copper work ran into six figures.

And then… nothing. No large-scale operation ever materialised. The geologist A. K. Hamilton Jenkin, writing in The Mines of Devon and cited by the Open University Geological Society, later described the second lode as containing only a small lens or pocket of pitchblende - enough to excite a chemist with a hand specimen, not enough to justify a working mine. The deposit was simply too small and too localised to be economic. The adit was abandoned and the wood began its slow reclamation.

The 1949 hush-hush survey

The story isn’t quite over, though. In April 1949, with Britain pursuing its own atomic weapons programme, the government quietly returned to King’s Wood. Local press at the time reported workmen digging near Hapstead Farm under “hush hush” instructions, a shaft being investigated, and a tributary of the local stream testing radioactive enough to alarm residents and fishermen. The site was rumoured to be used as a training ground where Commonwealth prospectors could practise hunting uranium with Geiger counters. The National Archives still holds a Ministry of Supply file titled simply “Raw materials: uranium; Kingswood mine, on Dartington Hall estate, Buckfastleigh, Devon” - a thin paper trail for what appears to have been a serious post-war reassessment of Britain’s domestic uranium reserves. It clearly went nowhere. Britain ended up sourcing uranium from elsewhere, and Kingswood was returned to the trees.

What I actually found - and what the meter said

I’d love to say I emerged with a sample of UK pitchblende. I didn’t. In fact, I briefly visited to witness the history of the mine, and then left.

On the way to the mine, my Radiacode was reading more or less normal background. Things started to climb at perhaps 200 metres from the adit - though it’s worth flagging that the dirt tracks running through the wood may themselves be slightly raising readings, quite common given waste materials from mining sites are often used to build paths around them. At the adit entrance itself, the Radiacode settled at around 0.22 µSv/h - somewhere between one-and-a-half and twice the typical UK background of about 0.10–0.13 µSv/h. Not dramatic, but a clear, sustained elevation, and audibly busier on the counts.

That figure tallies neatly with the published Geiger counter readings on Mindat by the surveyor Virginia Maine. Her measurements give a useful map of how the gamma field climbs as you head into the mine:

• Local background (about 200 m from the adit): ~12 counts per second

• At the adit entrance: ~25 cps — roughly 2× background

• First metre inside the adit: ~50 cps

• Through the body of the adit: ~50 cps (broadly stable)

• Pitchblende chamber, about 70 m in: over 1,000 cps

• At exposed pitchblende in the wall and roof: over 2,000 cps — around 170× local background

My 0.22 µSv/h at the entrance maps neatly onto her 2× factor. Extrapolating that ratio into the pitchblende chamber, a Radiacode at that point would likely be reading somewhere in the region of 10–20 µSv/h of gamma - roughly 100× UK background, and the kind of figure I usually associate with handling a hot WW1 compass at very close range, except that here the source is all around you rather than 20 cm in front of you.

And gamma is only the visible part. The real hazard inside the adit is radon. Radon is a colourless, odourless, denser-than-air radioactive gas that emerges continuously from uranium-bearing rock, and it irradiates your lungs from the inside via its alpha-emitting decay products — exactly the mechanism that produced the lung-cancer epidemic among the Joachimsthal silver miners. The Gillmore et al. (2001) survey, which sampled both South Terras and Kingswood between 1992 and 2000, measured Kingswood at a maximum of around 37,000 Bq/m³. For scale:

• Typical UK outdoor air: about 10 Bq/m³

• WHO indoor reference level: 100 Bq/m³

• UK domestic action level: 200 Bq/m³ — Kingswood is roughly 185× this

• UK workplace action level: 400 Bq/m³

Gillmore et al. then go on to do a dose calculation for Kingswood that’s worth quoting in summary: a single two-hour visit at those concentrations gives roughly 0.6 mSv of effective dose - meaning two visits would exceed the UK’s 1 mSv/year statutory limit for members of the public. Compared to South Terras, where the same team recorded one of the highest radon levels in Europe at about 3.93 million Bq/m³, Kingswood is the calmer of the two. That is not a high bar.

Bad air, and a wave of faintness

Something else I noticed near the adit: a slight wave of faintness. I want to be careful about over-attributing it - I’d been climbing through brambles and nettles for some time, I was hot, and I was running on a fair bit of adrenaline. Any of that would account for it. But the other plausible explanation, which I think is worth airing for anyone considering visiting old mines, is bad air.

“Bad air”, or blackdamp in the older miner’s vocabulary, is what you get when oxygen has been displaced or consumed underground - typically by rock and timber oxidation, water-rock chemistry, or the slow accumulation of carbon dioxide and radon. Both CO₂ and radon are denser than air and pool in low ground. Old adits are not sealed systems; they “breathe” in and out with barometric pressure changes, and they can vent oxygen-depleted, CO₂- and radon-rich air to the surface - particularly when, as at Kingswood, the adit was driven from the valley floor and sits at the bottom of a wooded combe with little airflow. Studies of gas emissions from old mines have documented this kind of natural thermal venting reaching surface buildings and surrounding land. The Kingswood adit has been quietly stewing for over a century with 37,000 Bq/m³ of radon inside, and standing at the entrance, breathing whatever the mine wants to push out is not necessarily the same as standing in a normal Devon wood.

I’m not going to claim with certainty that I was breathing bad air. I might just have been short of water and full of antihistamine. But it’s the right working hypothesis for the location, and it gave me one more reason to be conservative about how close I lingered.

Why I didn’t go in

Three reasons:

1. I was solo. Never a clever way to explore an abandoned mine.

2. I had no PPE. No respirator, no protective suit, no dosimetry beyond the Radiacode itself - and the Radiacode is a gamma scintillator. It tells me nothing useful about the alpha dose I’d be breathing in from the radon.

3. The numbers above. Two visits exceed my annual statutory dose limit. One visit, especially without breathing protection, isn’t worth a sample I could photograph from existing Mindat surveys.

I didn’t find pitchblende on the surface either. To be fair, I didn’t spend long looking - and given that mineralogists have been visiting this site on and off for more than a century, it’s reasonable to assume the obvious external hand specimens have long since been collected. Documented surveys on Mindat note that pitchblende-bearing slate slabs have been recovered from the spoil at the adit entrance in the past, with one published reading of greater than 1,000 counts per second at 30 cm. They’re just not lying around in 2026 for the casual visitor.

The pitchblende itself is still there, of course - exposed in the lode roughly 70 metres into the adit, where Chris Popham’s early-2000s photographs on Mindat show black patches of it through the rock. Could you collect a museum-grade sample? Almost certainly. Should you? Absolutely not. As one experienced mine explorer is quoted as saying about the site: a single speck of radioactive dust inhaled today can sit in your lung and do its work twenty years from now.

A mine going quietly back to the wood

What struck me most, climbing back out through the nettles, is how completely the landscape has reclaimed this place. There’s no signage. Nothing tells the casual walker that they’re standing near what was once a national news story, a Ministry of Munitions site, and a post-war atomic survey target. In another fifty years, with no surface workings to maintain and no economic reason to revisit it, Kingswood may pass entirely out of living memory - known only to mineralogists, mine historians, and the occasional Radiacode-toting Substacker with a death wish for his shins.

That feels like a loss worth marking. Not because the mine should be reopened - it shouldn’t - but because the history is genuinely interesting, and the silence around the site doesn’t quite match its place in the story of British uranium - and, indirectly, of every uranium-glazed plate and yellow-green glass tumbler still sitting on collectors’ shelves today.

Safety note: Kingswood adit contains extremely high levels of radon gas - published at up to 37,000 Bq/m³ - as well as significant gamma and alpha contamination from exposed pitchblende. The radon is the headline risk, and no Geiger counter or scintillator will tell you the alpha dose you’re inhaling. Two hours inside is roughly 0.6 mSv. The pitchblende is fascinating - it is not worth a lung tumour twenty years from now.

For the first time, I’ve also included some footage of my hunt around antique shops, showing the variety of items commonly found, including a very unusual vase.

Watch to see:

• The Lewes hunt: Navigating the local antique centers for hidden radioactive gems.

• Blue glass: How early 20th-century glassmakers used cobalt to turn yellow uranium glass into a stunning “Blueberry” or “Azure” shade.

• Bohemian luxury: A look at the Moser ashtray - dark green uranium glass and the iconic gold band.

Enjoy!

By the 1930s, the world had decided that if a little bit of radiation could shrink a tumor, then a lot of it could surely fix everything else. We look back now from our vantage point of lead-lined caution and find it easy (perhaps too easy) to scoff at the sheer, unadulterated madness of the time. But to the public of the Depression-era West, radium was a bottled miracle that promised to “rejuvenate” a weary civilization.

It was used, quite literally, in everything.

There was Radithor, the “certified radioactive water” that promised to cure everything from impotence to “general malaise.” Its most famous advocate, the steel tycoon and socialite Eben Byers, reportedly drank nearly 1,400 bottles before his jaw - quite literally and inconveniently - fell off.

The craze didn’t stop at quack medicine. There was Tho-Radia, the French cosmetic line that promised a “radiant” complexion (a claim that was, for once, scientifically accurate, if biologically catastrophic). There was radium-infused bread, radium-brand butter, and even - God help us - radium-treated chocolate. The “Spicy Treasures” of the time weren’t just collectibles; they were the breakfast of champions and the doom of the middle class.

Then, of course, there were the “Radium Girls.” The dial painters of the U.S. Radium Corporation who, instructed to “lip, dip, and paint” with camel-hair brushes, became so impregnated with the stuff that they would glow in the dark on their way home from the factory. They were the first to learn that the “miracle” was, in fact, a slow-motion execution.

It is this precise intersection of human ingenuity and unforgivable ignorance that birthed this Substack, Radium Quest.

People often ask me why I spend my weekends prowling through dusty antique fairs with a Geiger counter in hand, listening for that frantic, staccato click-click-click that signals a “hot” find. They see a piece of red/orange-glazed Fiestaware or a luminous WW2 aircraft gauge and see a hazard. I see a relic of a time when radioactivity still wasn’t understood, or we were just brave enough to be stupid.

My Substack is not merely a catalogue of uranium glass and “spicy” relics. It is a chronicle of our species’ desperate, often hilarious, and occasionally tragic desire to touch the sun. When I find a 1930s clock dial that makes my Radiacode scream, I am holding a tangible piece of history, a physical manifestation of a time when progress felt like a literal light in the dark.

We live in an age of sterilized safety, of “precautionary principles” and bubble-wrapped government advice. And while I have no desire to see my own jaw detach itself at dinner, I do find myself yearning for the audacity of that era. RadiumQuest.com is my way of keeping that glow alive, whilst respecting the science to remain safe.

It is an intellectual and physical hunt for the remains of a beautiful, terrifying mistake. It is a reminder that even the most “scientific” of certainties can turn out to be a lethal joke. So, here’s to the 1930s: a decade that was, in every sense of the word, absolutely glowing.

Join me on the quest. But for heaven’s sake, don’t lick the brushes.

It’s why I started Radium Quest, as the thrill of the hunt tends to begin with uranium glass, and then opens up to a vast world of other radioactive antiquities. But for the uninitiated, the world of uranium glass can be a little daunting. Is it dangerous? Why does it glow? And most importantly, how do I find more of it?

I’ve written this article for newcomers to uranium glass hunting to act as your field guide. This doesn’t focus on the science – as others are best placed for that – but instead everything a collector needs to know to start their own radioactive journey.

Why does Uranium Glass glow?

Uranium glass, as the name suggests, contains uranium, typically in the form of oxide diuranate, added to a glass mix before melting for coloration. This technique dates back over 200 years, long before the discovery of radioactivity and the development of atomic bombs. Quite simply, glassmakers discovered that adding uranium oxide to their batch created yellow and green colours.

In natural light, the glass ranges from a translucent yellow to a milky white or an opaque pale green. The real magic happens when you introduce ultraviolet (UV) light. When you shine your UV torch (usually 365nm or 395nm) at the glass, you are bombarding it with high-energy ultraviolet photons. The uranium catches this energy, gets “excited” for a split second, and then immediately drops it. In the process of catching and dropping, the energy loses a tiny bit of speed. It slows down just enough to change from invisible ultraviolet light into visible green light.

If you have a piece of uranium glass with a high uranium content out in the sun, then you may notice it subtly shines back. This is because sunlight also emits high levels of UV radiation, especially during the summer months. It’s quite an effect to witness!

It’s this dual personality, old looking glass but neon glow party at night, that makes collecting it so addictive.

A brief history of the glow

While there are examples of uranium usage in glass dating back to Roman times, the story really begins in the 1800s. Josef Riedel, a Bohemian glassmaker, is often credited with popularising it, naming the colours Annagelb (Anna Yellow) and Annagrün (Anna Green) after his wife.

By the Victorian era, uranium glass had taken Europe and the UK by storm. Factories like Davidson and Bagley here in England were churning out pressed glass that ended up on dinner tables across the country. It was the ultimate status symbol of the time; novel, beautiful, and vibrant.

The popularity continued into the 20th century, exploding during the Depression era in the US. However, the party came to an abrupt halt in the 1940s. With the onset of World War II and the Cold War, the government confiscated uranium supplies for the Manhattan Project and nuclear energy development. For a long time, “spicy” glass was off the menu.

Production did resume in the late 1950s, but by then, the golden age was over, and radioactivity was better understood. Today, antiques and vintage items from the 1850s to the 1940s are the prime targets for our quest.

Naming rights: vaseline vs. uranium

You will often hear the terms “Vaseline Glass” and “Uranium Glass” used interchangeably, but there is a distinction that purists love to argue about.

• Uranium Glass: This is the umbrella term for any glass containing uranium. If it glows green under UV light due to uranium content, it is uranium glass.

• Vaseline Glass: This refers specifically to the transparent, yellow-green glass that looks like the old petroleum jelly (Vaseline).

Vaseline Glass came onto the scene in the late 1800s; the most popular style was a transparent, bright yellow-green. At the time, the manufacturers didn’t call it “Vaseline glass.” They called it Canary Glass or Canary Yellow because of its intense yellow hue. This Victorian “Canary” glass is what we now call Vaseline Glass.

So, if you find a true piece of Vaseline glass (that oily, yellow-green transparent stuff), there is a very high chance it is Victorian (1880s–1900s) or early 20th century. It predates the mass-produced stuff that came later.

So, all Vaseline glass is uranium glass, but not all uranium glass is Vaseline glass.

Identifying the treasure: the holy trinity

When I’m out hunting at an IACF fair or rummaging through a car boot sale in Sussex, I rely on three things to identify a find.

1. The look

Before you even pull out your gadgets, learn to spot the colour. In natural light, uranium glass often has a slightly “greasy” or oily sheen. The yellow pieces look like frozen lemonade; the green pieces often have an art deco design and manufacture style that modern glass lacks. Once you get your “eye” in, you’ll be able to spot a potential piece without needing any gadgets.

2. The light

This is the fun part. Always carry a pocket UV torch (395nm is the standard frequency). When you shine it on genuine uranium glass, there is no ambiguity. It doesn’t just reflect purple light; it fluoresces a vivid, unmistakable neon green.

Note of Caution: Be careful of Manganese. Glass made with manganese can also glow, but it’s usually a fainter, more “soda-lime” green or sometimes orange-ish. If the glow is weak, it might not be the spicy prize you think it is.

3. The click

If you want the full Radium Quest experience, you need a Geiger counter. There is nothing quite as satisfying as holding your probe next to a delicate Victorian vase and hearing it click away. However, not all pieces of uranium glass will register as they’re just above background radiation.

It’s the final stamp of authenticity. However, not necessarily required unless you wish to branch out to collect other radioactive antiques.

Is it safe?

This is the question I get asked more than any other. The short answer is: Yes.

The amount of radiation emitted by a typical piece of uranium glass is very low. It is mostly alpha radiation, which cannot penetrate human skin. You would get a higher dose of radiation flying on a commercial aeroplane than you would from having a display cabinet of uranium glass.

My one piece of advice is don’t drink or eat from it. While the glass is stable, acidic foods (like orange juice or vinegar) can leach small amounts of uranium out of the glass. If you ingest it, that alpha radiation is now inside your body, where it can do damage. Keep the glass for display, not for dinner.

The thrill of the hunt

Collecting uranium glass is more than just hoarding shiny things; it’s about preserving a piece of scientific and industrial history. Whether it’s a Moser ashtray or a simple pressed-glass juicer, each piece tells a story.

You can find these pieces almost anywhere. I’ve found treasures for £1 at flea markets and junk shops. I’ve also occasionally paid a premium at antique fairs for rare Victorian pieces.

The market is rising as more people discover the glow (I’m probably not helping things…), but there are still bargains out there.

Join the quest

Uranium glass is the perfect entry point into the world of radioactive antiques. It’s visually stunning, historically fascinating, and safe.

If you want to see what I’m digging up next or read about my latest mistakes (like impulse-buying uranium ore after a beer), please consider subscribing and joining this website and community.

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Happy hunting!

I love these objects because each tells a story about how different cultures embraced colour, design, and yes… a little radioactivity.

1. America’s loud and proud Fiestaware

Let’s start across the Atlantic with the classic: Fiestaware. If you’ve ever looked up “Radioactive Red,” you’ve probably seen something very similar to the little breakfast bowl in my collection. The colour is stunning, somewhere between red, orange, and burnt ember, and it owes that glow to uranium oxide in the glaze.

This stuff is one of the most recognisable uranium-glazed items in the world. It’s also surprisingly spicy.

2. Europe’s colourful vase

Next up is a recent local find: an absolutely wild vase with an “exploded watermelon” pattern. It sits somewhere in the 1960s and is either Belgian or German, depending on who you ask (and trust me, I’ve asked).

Unlike the mass-produced Fiestaware, this one feels more like a studio piece; earthy, artistic, and unapologetically bold.

3. Britain’s polite chinaware

Finally, back home in the UK, we did things the British way: refined tea sets with a quiet little radioactive secret.

Crown Staffordshire produced some lovely pieces in the 1930s that used a pale uranium glaze, soft enough to look innocent, yet bright green under UV light. These weren’t rare at the time, and honestly, they still aren’t. Half the antique shops in the country have at least one example hiding on a shelf.

But they’re charming, quietly glowing reminders of a time when radiation wasn’t seen as something to avoid, but as a way to make your Sunday best a little more stylish.

If you haven’t seen the full comparison yet, check out the video—it’s a relaxed little tour through three glowing corners of history.

And if you’ve got your own uranium-glazed discoveries, I’d love to hear about them!

To enter, follow these two simple steps:

1. Subscribe to my Substack by clicking the button below.

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2. Comment on this post to confirm or message me.

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If you are already a subscriber to this Substack, thank you! Just do step 2.

The winner will be randomly selected on Saturday 29th November and contacted via email. I will pay for postage (which I may live to regret!) and the gauge will be packaged safely.

I’m running this competition as I need to downsize my collection, thought this would be a fun test to convince you lovely people to subscribe, and to give this to someone who enjoys spicy vintage items. If this is successful and fun, then I will run more competitions in the future. If you have any questions, just comment on this post and I will reply.

Giveaway – Terms and Conditions

1. Eligibility

• The competition is open to individuals aged 18 years or older at the time of entry.

• By entering, you confirm that you meet this age requirement and that you are legally permitted to receive items containing radioactive material in your country.

2. How to Enter

• Subscribe to the RadiumQuest Substack at https://radiumquest.com.

• Leave a comment on this blog post or send a direct message (DM) to confirm your entry.

• No purchase is necessary to enter or win.

• Only one entry per person is permitted.

3. Prize Details

• The prize is a genuine WW2 air pressure gauge that contains radioactive material (radium).

• The item will be shipped free of charge to the winner.

• Any import duties, taxes, or customs fees in the recipient’s country are not covered and are the responsibility of the winner.

4. Important Safety Notice

• The gauge contains radioactive material. By entering, you acknowledge:

  • You understand the potential health risks associated with radium.

  • The competition holder accepts no liability for any health issues, injuries, or damages resulting from possession or use of the item.

5. Shipping and Liability

• The prize will be shipped using a standard postal service.

• The competition holder is not responsible for:

  • Loss, theft, or damage during transit.

  • Any delays or issues caused by postal services or customs.

6. Legal Compliance

• This competition is intended to comply with applicable laws worldwide.

• Entrants are responsible for ensuring that participation and receipt of the prize are lawful in their jurisdiction.

• The competition holder reserves the right to disqualify entries from jurisdictions where this giveaway would be unlawful.

7. Winner Selection

• The winner will be chosen at random from eligible entries.

• The winner will be notified via email or DM within 7 days of the competition closing date.

• If the winner does not respond within 14 days, a new winner may be selected.

8. Data Protection

• Personal information provided for entry will only be used for administering the competition and shipping the prize.

• No data will be shared with third parties except as required for delivery.

9. Acceptance of Terms

• By entering, you agree to these Terms and Conditions in full.

• Discovered: eBay (an unloved, quiet listing!)

• Age: 1942 - 1944

• Radioactivity: 7.50 uSv/hr (roughly 30x background radiation)

• Maker: Record Watch Company

• History of the maker: The Record Watch Company was a highly respected Swiss manufacturer that created reliable precision pocket watches. During World War 2, the UK Government contracted them – among other Swiss suppliers – to equip armed forces. They were one of the largest producers known as the “workhorses of wartime timekeeping” featuring shock-resistant movements and accuracy in tough environmental conditions.

Unlike most of my items, this was discovered on eBay and I purchased it for around £20. In reality, this pocket watch is worth closer to £200 due to the quality of its still-working Swiss movement, genuine GS/TP (General Service / Time Piece) proving military issue, and the serial number being traceable to military records.

This was a period of time when quality movements were being made that weren’t overpriced to a big brand, and each was built to be serviced forever. I’ve not been able to match up the issue number of my watch to military records yet, but it’s highly likely to have seen service via general troops, artillery, or engineers.

Of course, this pocket watch is intensely radioactive, owing to the use of radium on the dial. When new, this pocket watch would have glowed continuously as the radium paint emitted energy via alpha particles and gamma, which excites a phosphor in radioluminescent paint, usually zinc sulfide. And no, the eBay listing didn’t know about this!

Over many years, the glow of the paint burns out and disappears, although it can sometimes be excited by a UV light. However, my pocket watch is so radioactive that the paint has long been burnt out, and there are even signs of radiation damage on the glass (murky brown burn).

War is dangerous, but so is this pocket watch if left in your trousers or jacket pocket over many months and years. The gamma rays can cause ionizing radiation that damages tissue and DNA. At the time, radiation was still in its infancy of being widely understood, and radium paint was an industrial necessity to keep troops safe through luminous devices.

• Discovered: At an antiques fair in Lingfield, UK

• Age: Circa 1960s

• Radioactivity: 2.74 uSv/hr (roughly 11x background radiation)

• Maker: Eric Leaper (Leaper Pottery, Newlyn)

• History of the maker: Eric Leaper’s work is best known for his establishment of a pottery in Cornwall, Newlyn. His work is distinctive due to its bright and bold colours, as well as the ‘splash’ glazes used. Very little information is available about him online, other than his use of dangerous chemicals to achieve some of his bold colours - he clearly experimented with uranium glazes at an unusually late time in history.

Uranium wasn’t just used in glass to colour it green, but also as a glaze to achieve bold red and orange colours. In the U.S., uranium-glazed ceramics are very common, but they’re rare to come across in the UK. So imagine my surprise to find a uranium-glazed item that was made in the UK, at a UK antiques fair, and created in the 1960s.

The date is significant because the vast majority of uranium-glazed ceramics were made between 1850 - 1948. Eric Leaper was using uranium during the 1960s to enhance the colours of his work, during a time when radioactivity was well understood, with uranium having industrial applications. Despite this, the glazing isn’t that dangerous… just don’t eat food from it as uranium is chemically toxic.

Today, his work is quite collectible with a cult following, potentially from enthusiasts like me who find ‘spicy’ objects. However, unfortunately - again for me - not all of his work uses uranium. I recently purchased a red/orange splash glaze vase as a clear Leaper piece of art, but there was no radioactivity.

The antique dealer at the fair I bought this from talked about Eric Leaper’s extravagant parties. He was apparently quite the character. If you know anything more about this potter, do let me know!

This video comes at a time when I’m actively reducing the size of my collection, having become rather large and difficult to store safely. So before a few of these get sold, I had to show them off.

To be clear, these items on display don’t pose any danger to visitors wishing to explore the museum. However, if I were a volunteer, I would be careful with how much time I spend around them. Not only are they highly radioactive, but one hopes the museum continually monitors radon gas to ensure the levels remain safe.

If you’re in the UK, then it’s worth visiting for an hour or two to admire the collection and, importantly, see how volunteers have worked so hard to keep the story of those who served alive.

WW2 aircraft gauges

Nothing gets the heart bumping more than seeing boxes of aircraft gauges. All shapes and sizes and years, but buried within several radioactive gauges waiting to be found. The search was on – despite the huge collection, I decided to settle on two gauges on this occasion. Mostly, as for the safety conscious, they’re a complete pain to store – emitting large amounts of radon gas and penetrating gamma radiation.

What a stunning two-some, especially as the radium hadn’t yet burnt off the zinc sulfide glow. To think these gauges would have seen active service in WW2, and the pilots would have seen the same glow. It’s like history has come alive.

Pocket watches

For a while, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for an Ingersoll Radiolite pocket watch, knowing that they’re more common in the U.S. than the UK. So I was delighted to unearth an Ingersoll Triumph pocket watch, produced after WW2, from a factory in Wales. It’s in perfect condition, partly due to its original case, and despite being dated post-WW2, it uses enough radium to be a very spicy addition to my growing clock collection.

Other catch and releases

There were plenty of other items found on the day, but they didn’t make it back on this occasion. This included uranium glass (far too expensive), military compasses (I’m satisfied with my current collection), and a curious mantlepiece ornament that mounted a Spitfire aircraft gauge.

I was hoping to find two specific items, but unfortunately, I had no luck on this occasion. Ideally, a uranium-glazed ceramic, but these are extremely difficult to find in the UK and uranium-glazed tiles.

This certainly won’t be my last IACF Antique Fair, so if you’re a fan of antiques, check out their rolling events calendar by clicking here.

• Discovered: At an antique shop in Dorking, UK

• Age: 1917

• Radioactivity: 95.6 uSv/hr (roughly 780x background radiation)

• Maker: Francis Barker & Son

• History of the maker: The company was founded by Francis Barker in Clerkenwell, London, in 1848. They were a major supplier of military-grade compasses to Allied forces during World War I.

More about this item

At one point, this was the most radioactive item I owned. It was found ‘in the wild’ sitting on a busy shelf in an antique shop in Dorking, UK. It clearly emits intense gamma rays, meaning I sadly have to keep this compass away from every living thing.

The prismatic compass had a patented design that allowed for simultaneous sightings of an object and the reading of a bearing. It has a foldable heads-up display with a thin hairline used for a target, with the compass viewable at the same time for the bearing. My particular WW1 prismatic compass is unusual as it is liquid-filled - a more premium and modern version that enabled faster movement - but apparently these were not standard issue.

What makes this compass so radioactive is the large amount of radium used mixed with zinc sulfide to make it glow - a crucial feature for nighttime operations. Sadly, only one part of my compass now glows, as the large amount of radium used has burnt out the zinc sulfide (a common occurrence). Based on my compass’s readings, I can only imagine that every inch of this beautiful device once glowed - potentially even in the murky kerosene liquid, given its brown radium colour.

Of course, I’m enjoying this item, so you don’t have to. More videos to come.

• Aren’t you afraid of radiation sickness? No, not possible from these items.

• Won’t you get cancer? I have the same chance as everyone else.

• Will you get uranium poisoning? No, I’m not eating my antiques.

The only question that gives me real pause for concern hasn’t been asked. That is ‘Aren’t you concerned about radon gas?’. Yes, especially since I accidentally built a radioactive gas chamber at home… but I’ll come onto this story shortly.

Let’s talk about radon gas.

What is radon gas?

Radon gas is found everywhere on Earth, formed from the natural decay of uranium and radium found in nearly all rocks and soils. When it exists outside, it typically has a low diluted level. As some parts of the world have higher amounts of radioactive materials in the ground, it means radon levels differ.

For example, if you’re based in the UK, the West side of the country has higher radon levels. It’s no coincidence that Cornwall has the only - now abandoned - uranium mine in the UK, often called the most radioactive place in the UK.

The challenge with Radon is that it is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. The gas itself is chemically inert and largely harmless, but due to its short half-life of 3.8 days, it decays into a series of radioactive products that release alpha radiation. When this type of radiation is outside of the body, it’s easily blocked by skin, but inside the body these radioactive isotopes interact with internal tissue, causing damage, and can lead to the development of lung cancer.

Radium-containing antiques emit radon gas

Radium decays into radon, so this gas will leak out of old antiques. In my collection, I have old aircraft gauges, clocks, watches, compasses, etc, all of which will be emitting radon. The immediate danger isn’t the fact they’re radioactive, as I don’t have them in proximity long-term, but that radon will build up in the room they’re stored in unless well-ventilated.

So if you’re interested in collecting radium-containing antiques, it’s crucial to understand radon to stay safe.

How to measure it?

Radon is measured in becquerels (Bq) per cubic metre of air. One becquerel (Bq) is equal to one radioactive decay per second. When using an electronic reader, you will receive short-term readings that measure amounts within a week, and a longer reading that is a month or more. Radon fluctuates, hence the different readings.

If you’re in the UK, the Government recommends radon levels be reduced in homes where the annual average concentration is at or above 200 Bq/m³. Additionally, a "Target Level" of 100 Bq/m³ has been established as the ideal outcome for efforts to lower radon at home.

I built a gas chamber

That radioactive gas chamber I mentioned at the start? Well, that’s my office. My short-term average radon levels were 291 Bq/m³ - nearly three times the recommended target level - after moving my monitor to my office for 48 hours. I deliberately wasn’t in the office over this period and ventilated it afterwards.

These high readings were produced by just four antique desk clocks and a pocket watch. The room itself isn’t ventilated when shut, so this became a - safe - at home experiment for radon measurement. After 48 hours of returning to my home office, I was surprised by the high readings.

I’ve corrected the issue by sealing these antiques in airtight plastic bags, stopping the radon from accumulating in the room, whilst also being able to enjoy having the clocks on display.

It’s also possible to keep radium-containing antiques unsealed, but in well-ventilated places. Some of the serious radium collectors have purpose-built ventilation systems.

Whether you’re a collector, interested in collecting items, or think you may have radium-containing antiques at home, stay safe and think radon.

Don’t ask questions that you don’t want the answer to.

This is Uraninite, commonly known as pitchblende, and is the most important ore for mining uranium. The secondary material on my sample is Autunite, which fluoresces green under UV light.

For those interested in this sample’s radioactivity, it measures 2.90 μSv/h on my Radiacode, which is roughly 27 times background radiation. It’s not my most radioactive object, but for reasons below, it is the item I’m most safety-conscious around.

A short history

Its place in scientific discovery was established by Marie Curie, who famously isolated pure metallic radium from the rock. For a large part of history, Uraninite was more of a waste material as the rush for radium occurred. To find one gram of radium it was necessary to mine eight tonnes of uranium.

The uranium waste material was used from the 19^th Century in oxide form to primarily colour glass green, now popularly collected as Vaseline and uranium glass. It was also used in glazes, such that can be found in vintage orange (so-called ‘radioactive red’) Fiestaware. Meanwhile, radium was seen to provide health-giving properties, causing it to become one of the most expensive substances in the world by 1909.

It was not until the development of the world’s first nuclear bomb, made famous by Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer film, that uranium found its primary purpose. It’s likely my rock came from the same place where mass mining took place to secure enough uranium for the Manhattan Project. At the same time, companies such as Fiestaware had their uranium stockpiles seized by the US Government.

This is an extremely condensed history, but the full story is fascinating, inspiring the title of this Substack.

Safety first

When I purchased Uraninite it was completely impulsive and opportunistic. Long-term, I’m not interested in collecting radioactive rocks, and I will likely find an educational place to donate this. Without all the equipment of a seasoned hobbyist, I’m extra cautious about remaining safe.

For a start, Uraninite is incredibly dusty and flaky. It’s very easy to accidentally contaminate surfaces with radioactive particles, some of which glow under UV light. It remains within the container it arrived in, and I’m aware that as time goes on, this sample will likely continue to break down.

It’s also a high emitter of radon gas, an invisible radioactive gas that appears in nature, but long-term exposure can lead to lung cancer. Typically, alpha radiation isn’t of a concern, as it’s the least penetrating form of radiation, stopped by a few inches of air or the outer layer of skin. However, radon gas is an alpha emitter that finds itself into the airways, which then means alpha will irradiate internal tissue.

Uraninite emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation – the latter being the greatest external threat. My sample is currently blocked by its box, the glass of a display cabinet, and distance, which means zero readings from a foot away. However, not all samples are the same.

Beautiful, but it will find a new home

My Radium Quest is focused on radioactive antiques, but this Uraninite sample is the exception to the rule. It’s eerily beautiful under UV light and is extremely difficult to find if you’re in the UK. From a long-term safety perspective, it will eventually find a new home, hopefully with a school. Until then, it will be safely locked away.

Oh, and never let me impulse buy stuff on the internet.

• Discovered: At an antique shop in Lewes, UK

• Age: Circa 1920s

• Radioactivity: 0.32 uSv/hr (roughly 3x background radiation)

• Maker: Moser

• History of the maker: The Moser glassworks was founded in 1857 by Ludwig Moser in Karlovy Vary, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). They gained a reputation across Europe for luxury glass, with Moser items being purchased for palaces around the world, but equally found in many ordinary homes. Their focus on lead-free crystal was praised for its purity and hardness.

If you’re hunting for uranium glass, then the best antique shops in my experience look like a hoarder’s house – messy, disorganised, and with little curation. Even better are the ‘antique centres’, shops that host spaces to multiple antique dealers who regularly update their showcased items. So on the way back from a family holiday on England’s South Coast, I just had to stop in the beautiful historic market town of Lewes.

My quest for radioactive antiques in Lewes was very successful. Discoveries included a beautiful but expensive uranium glass vase (£235!) and an old compass (on a special offer of just £28) that had radium on the points. I must have identified a dozen objects, some labelled, but the piece I walked away with was my ‘holy grail’ find.

In one antique shop window, on the far-bottom corner close to the road and hidden behind a lamp post, was a vintage ashtray. Its light pale colour looked like many Vaseline glass (very pure uranium glass) objects that I own – shining my UV torch immediately revealed its radioactive glow. It’s a bucket list find, a radioactive ashtray!

It’s a unique find - proudly engraved with the maker’s mark, Art Deco gold relief on the top, and good radioactivity (for uranium glass) indicating a healthy amount of uranium oxide used for its colour. My Radiacode 102 measured 0.32 uSv/hr, which is roughly three times background radiation.

Unbelievably, this antique shop revealed a second ashtray by the same maker that was black and didn’t glow under UV but was still radioactive. Apparently, Moser did create a near black glass variant of uranium glass that is sometimes referred to as black amethyst. Its condition wasn’t as good, and at £45 per ashtray, I decided to go for the Vaseline glass variant. However, the black version is still out there waiting to be found…

As Moser didn’t keep records of production numbers, it’s difficult to tell how rare this item is. However, I’m grateful to have found it.

Unboxing these so you don’t have to!

This Substack tells the story of my quest for radioactive antiques. Join me here to see my latest radioactive finds, read the stories behind the objects, and discover collecting tips.

My own interest started with uranium glass after seeing cabinets on Reddit stuffed full of glowing green glass. Uranium oxide was used as a colouring agent in glass during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, with little knowledge about its radioactivity. Similarly, the radium craze of the early 19^th century saw this highly radioactive material being added to watches, compasses, and other consumer products. Today, I have collected over 30 items that range from the years 1850 to 1946.

Expect to see new articles every other week, but you won’t find heavy science – there are far more qualified people who can cover this in academic detail. I collect, enjoy, and respect safety measures.

Please subscribe to follow this journey.