Note: This website is under construction. Last update: June 29, 2005.
My collection of radioactive items began a few years ago when I went hunting around with a CD V-700 and found some radium dial aircraft gauges sitting on a shelf in a back room. Many of the items in the collection were acquired off of eBay while most of the rest were found with a Geiger counter at antique stores.
I try to limit my collection to items that are noticeably above background when measured with a common Geiger-Mueller detector. The Geiger counter I use most often is a Monitor 5 from S.E. International. It has a thin window pancake probe and is sensitive to alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. Most of the items in my collection can also be detected with a CD V-700. I also limit the collection to items that contain fairly long lived isotopes.
The collection travels to teacher education workshops put on by Kent State University in conjunction with the Health Physics Society and the American Nuclear Society.
Originally I had called my collection "The Radioactive Collection" but by any measure The collection would have to be The Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Collection at Oak Ridge Associated Universities (OARU).