Burial Experiment
Good idea everyone! I am excited to see this forum doing a new experiment instead of arguing about old stuff. Predictions are an important part of this process. If you have a good handle on what is going on, then your predictions should play out in the experiment. If they don't you are not looking at the situation clearly. My thoughts below:
1. My suggestion is to only bury real currency. I would however get some original time period bills, some bills from the 80's or 90's and some modern ones. This will tell you if there is a big difference in the degradation of modern vs older bills. If there is no difference then additional experiments can be with modern bills.
2. In our research the ink did not seem to have any effect on the degradation process. I would not be too concerned about that.
3. No matter who's theory you believe (unless you think the Ingram's buried the money) the bills were out in nature and under the sand for at least a couple years. The holes in the bills proceeded very slowly otherwise there would have been nothing left. We saw holes in all stages of formation. If the experiment shows holes or ones starting to form, the info should allow us to extrapolate how long the original bills were buried. Lets say after a year we JUST start to see holes forming, then you can confirm that holes all the way through would take multiple years etc.
4. Tension on the rubber bands mattered. I would put multiple bands on each bundle under different tensions. We have bands made to similar specs to the originals we can donate to the experiment.
5. Bills covered by other bills were well protected. I don't think you have to go more than 5-6 bills thick for a stack. Maybe have one stack of modern ones full thickness as a control.
6. We have bills buried in Tena beach sand now since 2009 so about 7 years. I pulled them out last year to give them a look and they were remarkably well preserved. This suggests that water and sand alone will not degrade the bills to the extent seen in the Cooper bills. Biologic factors are most likely the degraders.
7. If our theories are right, and the dredging replenished the sand on the beach, it might be hard to keep them buried just a few inches below the sand today. I would bury aluminum tin foil balls near the money so you can find them again with a metal locator. If the money goes downstream so will the balls and you will know what happened.
8. I would also cut the bills in half so outsiders reading this forum will not go looking for "cash" buried on TB.
9. Make sure to mark each bundle with indelible marker serial numbers so you can keep them all straight.
10. Take pictures when you are burying them for orientation, serial number and depth.
11. If at all possible it would be better to not rebury the bundles but remove them one at a time and hold them. That way you can get a degradation profile that can be extrapolated.
That is all I can think of now.
Tom Kaye
Poll