Yes a weird question, but one I have been thinking about for the past 12 hours or so. I was looking through my collection and when I got to some cards that rattle really bad in the slab there were little to no noises to be heard. I thought this was odd and it got me thinking. I know certain plastics can shrink in the cold so with that in mind I looked around at some other slabs and found it seems some of them in older scans seems to have more room on either the right to left side than they do now. pics underneath.
The cards still seem fine I’m not really worried, but it has been getting cold around here and I keep my cards in a tight box so I’m genuinely curious if shrinking can happen with a slab under the right conditions. Any thoughts on this would be sweet to hear
Thanks definitely a big possibility, just that with the lack of rattling got me thinking if shrinking is possible. I never thought of it so I wanted to ask and see if it was just a layer of collecting I hadn’t known of
It’s possible, but also possible the card itself changed in shape slightly due to a change in humidity. Good to store your cards in a stable environment if you can, I aim for 45-55% humidity and a comfortable temperature.
I’m not sure about slabs shrinking due to cold but it could also be just regular micro variance in plastic or card thickness that causes the rattling or lack thereof.
Thanks for the response. I feel thats a factor as to why cards would rattle in the first place, thats why I wonder why they would stop all of a sudden.
Since curiosity got the best of me:
all materials expand/contract and its calculated using the initial length of an object, the change in temperature, and the thermal coefficient of the material (pmma plastic?)
ΔL=α⋅L0⋅ΔT
PSA case is about 5.25 in, lets say the temp changes 100°F ~38°C (pretty extreme), and thermal coefficient for pmma is about 6.5e-5.
the psa case would “shrink” about 0.01 in… one hundredth of an inch…