As far a pm's I would not think so. The early laser's used a ruby, light passed back a forth through the ruby while a coil of wire was wrapped around the glass tube. The wire coil was powered with high voltage dc current. The current excited the ruby atoms and aligned the light rays. Each end of the glass tube that contained the ruby had a mirror coated with silver to make it the best mirror which caused the light rays to pass back and forth through the ruby until enough were aligned to break through one of the mirrors. They would coat one of the mirrors with a thicker layer of silver so the laser light would pass out of the one with less silver.



Later the ruby was replaced with inert gases. I would go with the ebay suggestion but check it out before you toss it out. Mike.