Black anti-static foam corrosion

[Tothwolf]

On Sat, 3 Dec 2016, Fred Cisin wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Dec 2016, drlegendre . wrote:
>
>> Interesting find, thanks for posting this. I've seen this as well. with 
>> a batch of old ICs which had been stored (in black foam) for some 20-30 
>> years. The leads kind of just stayed behind in the foam.. My assumption 
>> was that the foam was simply hygroscopic, and held enough atmospheric 
>> moisture & pollutants to foster corrosion.
>
> There are numerous black foam formulations.
>
> I inherited some lenses (including a Leitz Tele-Elmarit 180mm (<250 
> made)) that had been stored for a few decades in an essentially airtight 
> case with black foam.  When I first opened the case, it seemed as though 
> there was liquid in the case, with an intense vinegar? smell.  Second 
> time that I opened the case, a few hours later, it was dry and crumbly, 
> and the outer painted surfaces of the lenses were badly pitted and had 
> to scrape bits of the foam off, but NOT at all like water damage.  It 
> turned that lens from mint condition and a major rarity, into usable but 
> POOR cosmetic condition (a loss of more than a thousand dollars in 
> value!). (Three other cases had simply disappeared between the time my 
> buddy died and the time that the county let us go through the house.)

Something similar happened with a Nikon FT2, Nikon EM, and some lenses 
after a local friend of mine passed away in 2001. The same also happened 
with his HAM radio gear, which I was supposed to get. For much of the 
radio gear, I could likely come up with the model/serial numbers too. (We 
know who took the HAM radio gear, but couldn't really do much about it.)

http://strudel.ignorelist
.com/~tothwolf/classiccmp/stolen_nikon_camera_gear.txt