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When we were at Bakewell Show last month, we bumped into someone we had not met before, Barry Taylor who also lives very close to us.
Barry is a collector at heart, but also runs an attraction called "Geology World" from his home in Chesham, Bucks.
Barry invited us to call in and visit and this week we took him up on his kind invitation.
Barry runs Geology World from his home but has made much use of his space to house cabinets and drawers, plus an exhibition in a purpose built cabin in his garden.
Posted on behalf of the Russell Society; here is a heads up for the upcoming offer for sale of the Norman Cogger Mineral Collection.
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Norman Cogger |
Reiner and I retired to Cobalt, Ontario, Canada a little over a year ago. When we aren't out exploring the old mine sites in and around the area, we devote our time in support of the Cobalt Historical Society.
The group maintains the Heritage Silver Trail, a self-guided tour through the Town of Cobalt and the back roads of Coleman Township. We are a volunteer, not-for profit organization. Our duties include keeping the trails clean and safe for those who visit the historic mining community.
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In the depths of Peter Uerpmann's collection we came across a block of massive crystalline halite - rock salt.
The locality is given as Asse II, probably picked up during his time as a worker in the German Nuclear industry.
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As it is my birthday today I thought this little bit of mineral related trivia would brighten up the day.
Early last year I was listing an aragonite (and gypsum) specimen from Tomnadashan Mine, Wester Tullich, Loch Tay, Scotland.
An intrguing locality that was somewhat unsuccessfully mined for copper with associated smelter operational between 1838 and 1862.
Within Peter Uerpmann's collection of European minerals we came across quite a large comparatively heavy specimen (110g) of slaggy matrix filled with bright metallic octahedrons of silver to 1mm stacked in pagoda-like parallel groups, labelled from Silberhütte Lautenthal, Harz, Germany.
The size and richness of the silver content intrigued me, surely silver was a highly prized mining and extraction product, how come such a large amount was present in the waste slag?
We already recently reported on the number of new minerals being added to e-Rocks in October, an impressive average of 161 items per day went up in the last 2 months.
We thought it might interesting to share some of the other e-Rocks facts and figures with you.
Again during October our total of orders topped 2,500 and over 4,500 individual items were sold, remembering that orders are often combined with a number of items included.
10 years ago in 2007 we were visited by Somerset based collector Colin Palk. Colin's specific interests were minerals from Scotland, aided and abetted by his regional work in Scotland for the BBC.
Subsequently Colin moved his collection on, it arriving with Nick Carruth via an Auction in Weston Super Mare in early 2011.
Part of Colin's collection were some very deep sky blue fluorite pieces from Netherglen Quarry, near Elgin. The fluorite was in an incredible colour better set off with small bright pyrite crystals.
The other day I was checking through some minerals from last year's fluorite find at Shannapheasteen in the Irish Republic.
Within the base of some quartz crystals were some small 2mm clear to white flat crystals. These were isolated and well dispersed within the specimen.
For a while I was scratching my head hoping this might be something different to the most likely option of albite.
Sadly like most strange things that turn up, it was just albite. On the plus side it is a new mineral for the locality list!
You can't win them all.
I was working on a new mineral the other day and spotted an interesting question raised shared by various sources.
Tredouxite (IMA approved pending publication) is named for professor Marian Tredoux in the Department of Geology, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.
According to write ups, out of nearly 5.3K minerals, around 700 have been named after people; however tredouxite is only the 81st mineral to be named after a female.
Organised by the Sussex Mineral & Lapidary Society www.smls.org.uk
Saturday 18th November 10.00am - 4.30pm
Clair Hall, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, RH16 3DN
Over 40 dealers with minerals, gems, fossils, meteorites, flints, books, & accessories for sale
Admission £2.50, Children 50p, Rockwatch Members free
Post Munich and another 3 new minerals are photographed and listed into our database.
This latest group are all offered by Italian specialist Marzio Mamberti of New Brand Minerals and with excellent background information.
Here are the three minerals, one photo above and two below, the specimens are listed below in the Item References, etc.
Manganiakasakaite-(La)
(Allanite Group)
CaLaMn3+AlMn2+(Si2O7)(SiO4)O(OH)
Russoite
Back in 2007 when we began cataloguing Warren Taylor's Tsumeb minerals we came across a real stand out rock.
It was oddly labelled as "Quartz Psm Azurite" but was obviously gypsum and appeared to have formed around something round like a pipe.
Warren wasn't sure of its origin, though it was acquired with other minerals from Tsumeb and part of his collection.
Today, 10 years later Jill Brunner from Kalahari Minerals has been on to us about listing an oddball from Tsumeb; again not sure of how to classify it but she did have the story of the origin.
Sharyginite was listed as a new mineral, approved pending publication in the June 2017 Mineralogical Magazine.
The formula is Ca3TiFe2O8 it was first identified in material collected from Caspar Quarry, Bellerberg, Eifel, Germany.
Probably unsurprising as it is an oxide mineral with titanium and iron it is black, and analogous to shulamitite, Ca3TiFe3+AlO8 with an extra iron in exchange for aluminium.
Crystal system is orthorhombic.
It has already been quite a month, but today we passed another milestone with this specimen of bakhchisaraitsevite.
No it isn't the most unpronounceable mineral on the site, or the longest mineral name not to use a U or O, though it might be either!
This specimen is listing number 620000: we last posted about listing 610000 on 30th August, 62 days ago.
Congratulations to our sellers who have been adding new items at an average rate of 161 items per day to bring this number up so rapidly.
The day before we went to Munich the nice man from UPS turned up on my doorstep with quite a large box.
As it happened, the Sunday before I was out dog walking and pocket pinging on messenger learning all about a little discovery up in Weardale.
A new cavity had been opened that appeared to have been shale/breccia lined but populated with isolated with gemmy pale blue fluorite twins.
Earlier this month I was introduced to a small selection of specimens of talc on dolomite from Portreath Beach on the Lizard, Cornwall.
These came to prominence in the Mineralogical Record Show Report for Ste Marie 2017, written up as quote.
Saturday is the last day of our Munich roundabout tour for 2017. It is also the first public day and weekend crowds descend upon the place.
We only planned to be there for 1/2 a day finishing off business and seeing the last few people on our list
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Friday is the first open day of the show, namely for dealers and professionals.
As usual footfall is usually up along with the protective film on the carpets!
Our job today was to help with Christian Rewitzer on his booth, plus meet with customers to catch up on all things e-Rocks
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As promised I took some pictures of the displays within the Mine to Mine Exhibition. If you are at Munich it is really worth going to see this.
This is not all the cases, or all the minerals within the cases shown, but hopefully gives and appreciation of the minerals on display. We should also appreciate all the owners/instituations who made the minerals available for exhibition!!
Late to bed and up with the lark, is the usual routine at Munich Shows and today was no different.
Our Hotel breakfast was excellent, very unhealthy and would set anyone up for the day.
A quick ride on the U-bahn and we were back in the Halls and set up was well underway with floors being swept and final additions being made to cabinets.
It is at this stage at the Show that you need to go around again as so much has appeared and will continue to appear throughout the day.
A very early start from TV Towers, to Heathrow and onto the short flight to Munich.
Really it is a very easy journey and a good time for George and I to catch up on business and plan for the next few days.
The other day we added the new mineral wildenauerite to the database.
This phosphate mineral with the formula:
Zn(Fe3+,Mn2+)2MnFe3+(PO4)3(OH)3(H2O)6·2H2O was approved pending being published by the IMA in August/September 2017.
Isostructural with new minerals wilhelmgümbelite and closely related to schmidite.
You may have noticed today's home page centre has changed; usually we display "today's auctions closing", but today we are showing "all auctions". There is a simple reason for this.
Because of demand from our sellers, we have had to increase our schedule from 5 auctions to 6 a day. Our "auctions closing today" panel caters for 3, 4 or 5 auctions. So to fit everything in we have opted for the "all auctions" panel.
We will revert back to the usual screen on days when 5 auctions are due to close.
George flagged a mineral listing to me last night, an example of kämmererite from Mont Haïto in Togo.
Very rarely do we have to add a new country to our geographical database, but until now we had seen nothing listed from this smaller country in Africa.
The listing by Andreas Jechorek of SystematicXX in Germany is for an old (1970s) piece featuring quite good crystals on a chromite rich matrix.
Haïto is a small area in the Plateau region of Togo, which hosts deposits of nickel, uranium, zinc and chromiun, as well as iron, titanium and some alluvial gold.
A couple of weeks ago we were contacted by a collector who had stopped collecting and was interested in moving his specimens on.
After completing a purchase last week and having been away in Bakewell all weekend, today was the day we had arranged to pick the pieces up.
We set off early into the Monday traffic; currently the climate in the UK is strangely warm and dusky as Hurricane Ophelia tracks to our west. There was a strange hazy sun over London as we trucked in that direction.
A Sunday lay-in follows the early Saturday start at Bakewell. The show does not open until 9am. This allows the dealers to get back or recover from various excesses of the previous night.
Last night in addition to the Dealers' dinner there were at least 3 other venues with dinners/sessions going on in town. We had a quiet curry with Mike Brooke, in a restaurant with two other groups from the show.
Back to the show and as said yesterday George and I went to settle up and collect specimens from under various tables.
Here we are at the 2017 Bakewell Show, and what a day it has been.
Having stayed overnight in town last night we started the day early in the main "gymnasium" hall and straight into the business of looking at minerals and meeting people.
In under 2 weeks it will be time for this year's Munich Show. Mineralientage München will be open from 27th - 29th October and George and I will be there from 25th October.
As usual we will be based with Christian Rewitzer in Hall A6.271.
Mineralientage München is a great opportunity for us to meet friends and our many customers/sellers; so if you fancy coming along to see us please make your way over to A6.271.
This year we have a lot to talk about with new software, features and services - our header gives a sneak preview.
Yesterday our friend Aamir Shah came calling as he has been doing since 2007.
We first met Aamir in the car park at Bakewell Show in October 2006 and ever since he has been a regular visitor to TV Towers 3 or 4 times a year.
Aamir spends 2-3 months in the UK followed by 2-3 months in Pakistan looking out minerals.