PT 56, S2, Q24 - Over 40,000 lead seals from the early

[noah]

The conclusion of this argument is that there must have been many more letters sealed with the lead seals than the number of seals that remain today. Why? Because the lead would have been reused (melted down and recast) except in a few cases where the seal was used for a special document.

Playing this out in real time, the way one might do it under pressure:

(A) looks good
(B) who cares about documents being destroyed? Doesn't help. Eliminate.
(C) does it matter that there was a lot of lead available? Eliminate.
(D) looks good
(E) hmm, looks good and similar to (D).

Let's think about (D) and (E) since they're so similar.
(D) So, there might have been 40,000 special documents, what does this mean. Each one gets a seal, then that accounts for the 40,000 seals. So does it help prove that there were more documents sealed with lead? Not particularly. We would have to know that many more letters were also sealed with lead.

(E) Now it's the reverse -- no, it's not, it's about documents in general, not special ones. So there were less than 40,000 documents sealed at any one time. So, there might have been 39,900, that doesn't prove that the number of sealed letters was many more times the number of seals.

So, I hope it's (A). [under time pressure, pull the trigger at this point]. (A) does strengthen because it shows that most of the seals that were used were used for non-special documents, so they would have been opened and then could be re-used. If we thought most of the seals were used for special documents, then that would weaken the argument.

Tell me if you have further questions about this.