Respectfully, that seems unlikely. A microgram of Po-210 costs several million USD, and while I’m sure the price was a bit lower in 1947, I doubt it was crackerjack-box toy cheap. The main reason it’s used as an expensive assassination device is because it’s so rare to have the resources to posses lethal quantities and looks like terminal cancer. Moreover, hobbyists still make spinthariscopes using zinc sulfide and trace amounts of americium-241 (another alpha-particle emitter) taken from a smoke detector or two. Lastly, although either radioisotope can be dangerous, even such small amounts must be ingested to be lethal.
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