Lucite Cube // Thorium

Element collectors are generally relegated to ignoring the radioactive metals or filling those slots with dummy stand-ins. That's because even if they're not concerned about the radioactivity, where can you get these metals? With the exception of uranium you just can't. Even where there are no major safety concerns or regulations forbidding their sale or ownership, there's simply no commercial outlet you can turn to as a source. Shame, too, since thorium's mild radioactivity makes it completely safe to handle in small quantities; ie., its radioactivity comes from alpha particle decay which is unable to cross even a sheet of paper!

That's what makes this offering so special. Normally, the closest you can come might be old stock thorium mantles or thorium-doped welding rods—both of which are a far cry from the real thing.

Thorium is actually quite plentiful in nature. Maybe even as common as lead but having no real commercial use, as well as the fact that it is very difficult to purify chemically, means that it is effectively rarer than almost every other natural element on the periodic table. Luciteria is lucky to make a handful of these samples available to collectors in the form of thin slivers of this little known metal.