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FAN OF NICKELBACK
Apr 9, 2002
My family and I were driving around, basically just getting out of the house. We happened to find a small, underfunded museum built on a site that was supposed to be an RV park (until they found a bunch of really cool Iguanadon footprints and junk).

The curator was a very sweet old woman who just kinda enjoyed having people enjoy the fossils and history around them.

She happened to need some help lifting some heavy junk around, so sure why not. She gave me three kinda dusty fossilized things as a thank you and told me to just rinse them under water. Maybe that is really the best method, but Googling talked about baking soda, vinegar and other chemicals. There was a lot of back and forth, talk about vinegar causing crystals to grow on them etc.

They likely aren't rare or special (I can't say I ever thought about owning a fossil before), but since I have them I figured I should probably display them somehow.

I'm wondering if anyone here has first-hand experience with collecting them as a hobby (which I also just found out is a thing; I was really surprised how inexpensive a lot of fossils are). I'd like to get them cleaned and spiffy, but I don't even know what a perfect end result should look like. Any advice, direction or just general information that might get me started in a clear direction?

Edit: attachement seems wonky, dunno if it's like that for everyone else. Here's the fossils (some kinda bivalve, a twisty thing and a sea urchin from the cretaceous):



(Also, they could easily be plaster casts, Hell if I know! Edit: brushed off a bit and definitely not plaster, so that's neat.)

I just went with 15 min vinegar soaks with toothbrushing and water baths and it seemed OK so I stopped. Do they get any better or am I done?

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FAN OF NICKELBACK fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jun 15, 2014

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