Blogs
- 27 Jul, 2018Terlingua 1936 The Terlingua quicksilver district is a narrow, east-west area about 20 miles long, in the southern part of the Big Bend region of southwestern Texas. The cinnabar deposit was discovered by Comanche Native...
- 20 Jul, 2018The Italian town of Larderello was created to exploit the mineral riches of boraciferous fumaroles. Its chemical production was soon eclipsed by geothermal power generation. The minerals found around the area (33 in total)...
- 18 Jul, 2018A small flake of Californian gold from Coloma, the location of Marshall's '48 discovery. Sutter's Mill was a sawmill, owned by 19th-century pioneer John Sutter, where west-coast gold was first found in significant quantities...
- 13 Jul, 2018Venus’ rolling uplands in 1982, with Venera 13 in foreground. Well below the sublimation altitude The North Pennines region of England is blessed with mineral riches. During the 18 & 19th centuries, vast quantities of...
- 06 Jul, 20181730: The first prospectors in the the Franklin Mining District, Dutch miners from the Hudson Valley, unfortunately called the area "the copper tract." Although copper minerals do occur in the orebody - 38 of them,...
- 05 Jul, 2018Above, a 1.58 gram nugget of gold, resembling a lizard-like creature, with adherent quartz matrix, Zwedru, Liberia. In the early 1980's a couple of good mates of mine were living in Monrovia, Liberia. While there, Linda...
- 30 Jun, 2018When water freezes, it forms the mineral ice. The most beautiful specimens soon melt, so e-Rocks has never sold any. Don’t be dismayed by the prospect of an article on ice though, just wade through a next bit about ...
- 27 Jun, 2018Recently e-Rocks enabled the sale of a very rare mineral - Ramazzoite. The specimen above, measuring 1 × 2.5 × 1.2 cm, sold by Ligurian Minerals for £681. Found so far only at the type locality, Mount Ramazzo Mine, Genoa,...
- 24 Jun, 2018Above, .539 grams of native gold panned from the Suisgill Burn. The magnificent Hornsby Nugget, top left, naturally folded, weighs 27 milligrams. In 1977 I drove my Dad's Mazda way up north. To the site of the Great...
- 22 Jun, 2018The La Fossa crater on the Aeolean Island of Vulcano has spectacular fumaroles. This one is venting gas at around 400°C, surrounded by an aureole of sublimates; white salammoniac and 4 allotropes (or polymorphs) of sulphur...
- 16 Jun, 2018In terms of desirability, the specimens collected by NASA in ‘69 would be hard to beat. Their superb provenance is excellently documented. They are holotypes of three minerals new to science, and brave men risked their...
- 09 Jun, 2018Introduction: A few months ago I came across the mineral aldridegeite in the IMA list of minerals whilst doing some research. This sulphate mineral is a member of the develline group first discovered and only found at...