'Cellulose nitrate was used to make dice from the late 1860s until the mid twentieth century, and remains stable for decades. Nitric acid is released in a process called outgassing. The dice cleave, crumble, and then implode.'
Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck by Ricky Jay and Rosamond Purcell
When I was a museum curator, we knew this as 'off-gassing'. It's why you don't store lead objects in oak boxes, for example, because you end up with a box of lead oxide.
At one time billiard balls were also made of cellulose nitrate. Occasionally, when two balls struck each other sharply, there would be a small explosion.
I have bags of the stuff in my desk (celluloid is still the king of materials for guitar picks). Not really explosive in the huge kaboom sense but burns readily if you set fire to it (how fast depends on the form, as thin fibers it was a replacement for gunpowder, called gun cotton).
Hi! There's a whole exhibit on these at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles if you wanna go see it. You might also be quoting the exhibit and I just don't remember the name
There is also a none zero chance that if you rolled those dice hard enough that would explode. They had a real problem with celluloid billiard balls going bang which is not something you want to happen in a saloon in a place like, say, Tombstone Arizona in the 1880’s.
I want a whole museum with beautiful and dangerous stuff like this... like The Poison Garden but for household items. We'll put these next to the uranium glass.
Can confirm. I have a 1918 Gibson L1 guitar that had a cellulose tailpiece that imploded.
Cellulose nitrate is the stuff they make the brown marbled guitar picks out of, too.
Considering that Jay could kill someone from across a room with a playing card IRL, I need to make a character based on him who also uses flammable explosive dice.
Hold up! So does that mean all old dice above a certain age are doomed to do this? Or were they introduced to something that caused this reaction in those dice specifically?
