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George and I have just picked up the collection of Dr Ernst Peter Uerpmann from deepest Spain.

The collection of over 3,000 pieces has been in storage since 2002 when Peter moved from Germany to Alicante on his retirement; there are several interesting suites and many classic localities/minerals represented.

Also for those interested in Tsumeb, Peter's collection features at least 500 pieces with a good mix of historic rare and aesthetic specimens.

It is approaching the second anniversary of George joining the e-Rocks team; so after a record 24 consecutive "Employee of the Month" awards we thought it time to reward him with a nice trip to Spain.

The upshot to this will be that we are going to be out of the office from Thursday 29th September to Sunday 2nd October, however we will have access to emails/phone etc, but maybe slower to respond.

TVM Auction items to be shipped should be up to date to payments before Wednesday 28th September and resume on Monday 3rd October.

The calendar has quickly stepped around again and this year's Autumn show schedule is beginning soon; in two weeks it will be Bakewell time once more.

George and I will be there again this year and no doubt will see many of our UK based collector friends there, and maybe a few from overseas?

It is a great 2 day event and if you have not already been, well worth the trip, details are below (courtesy of PLMS).
 

I collected the fluorite specimen above back in April 1996.

I remember it well from the events of the day before!

In those days I used to travel up from the South of England for weekend mooching trips in and around Weardale, usually arriving at the Broadwood "Works" for Saturday closing time at noon.

The "Works" was a fluorite/fluoride processing plant where lorries would deliver fluorite rock from Frazers Hush (and Pateley Bridge) for refining into powder for industrial use.

Fake mineral (and fossil) specimens have been around as long as there have been collectors and widely regarded as a big "no-no" for most people, and rightly so.

Some fakes are obvious; I remember well back in 2003 at Ste Marie the open air Romanian guys with their "biro" beryls and masses of vivid pink rhodochrosite. All great until there was a sudden thunderstorm, and the "pink" was transferred to the pavements and puddles!

Last month we blogged about the acquisition of an important Wheal Maudlin "Horsetooth" siderite specimen from an unspecified lot of minerals at an auction in North Yorkshire.

Siderite - Wheal Maudlin, Lanlivery, Cornwall

The provenance of the piece has now been traced to having belonged to the Wyvill family at Constable Burton in North Yorkshire, UK.

....and alkali mineral collectors. We have just purchased a small collection specialising in these minerals from UK collector Ben Gibson.

The collection also contains a small suite from Cornwall, plus interlopers from other places like USA, Norway, India, Congo and of course Tsumeb/Namibia.

Through his interest work and travels, plus his home proximity to former premises of dealer Gregory Bottley and Lloyd, Ben has put together some great pieces - soon to be available with TVM auctions.

We will provide a better information about the collection once we begin listing.

We didn't quite get to 50000 uploaded items during the first year of the "new" e-Rocks website, but we were very close!

Here we are 3 days later and courtesy of Volker Betz with a whitlockite specimen from Tip Top Mine, South Dakota, USA we crossed the line.

According to my feeble arithmetic that is an average 135 new listings each day since we changed over - quite a run rate!

(For those wondering how the numbering works we started on 3rd of September 2015 at #500000, we just reached #550000).

Frequently pointed out by kind visitors are the typos in the texts I produce - as always my thanks for the assistance with this!

This time this is not a typo of fluorite but an interesting specimen of a mineral variety I had not looked into before.

This specimen of fiorite came from Pearl Freeman's inventory, where she had acquired it 40 years ago from a source catalogued as Greybill.

On Wikipedia/Mindat fiorite is described as a variety of opal found in cavities in volcanic tuff. It is a globular, botryoidal or stalactic.

September 3rd 2015 was the day that we changed over the e-Rocks website (above) to the current site you see today.

It was a very long day and but we got through and have not really looked back since!

All in all it has been quite a year on e-Rocks, with more minerals, auctions and users than ever before, and without the constraints of the old software the site has continued to grow and expand with ease.

In the world of minerals different localities can often be distinguished by variations in morphology and or associations; for example it is comparatively easy to determine that a dioptase specimen was collected in Tsumeb over say Kaokoveld or Altyn.

I believe it is more unusual to find something that is almost completely identical so as to make a visual distinction almost impossible.

During our recent trip to sort and retrieve more minerals from the Gabrys Museum we encountered the specimen above.

This last weekend George has been away at a friend's wedding in York.

In addition to the planned festivities we also scheduled him a visit to look at some minerals whilst he was in the area!

Arrived back here at TV Towers today is George with 22 flats all selected and negotiated by himself.

Congrats to George for completing his first solo trip, he also does a neat job in the carvery!

The Hampshire Mineral & Fossil show is on Saturday 3rd September this being the first anniversary of the current e-Rocks site launch!

I am sure we will conjure up something to mark the event...

....meanwhile the mineral show is at its usual venue in Lyndhurst Community Centre.

Time: 10:00am - 16:30pm.

The Hampshire show although small is always well attended and usually has some nice things to see, with displays by the club plus tea and cakes.

After being on the road all last week it was good to have something nice come to us for a change.

Many UK dealers/collectors will know Steve Buckland as a keen fluorite collector, who has specialised in mostly North of England material over the past decades.

As Steve has moved to Thailand and his collection is heading in a new direction (larger pieces) we were given the opportunity to acquire the portion of specimens that no longer fit in.

Back in May we were pleased to announce that the e-Rocks Facebook page had reached 6,000 likes, well now we have reached the 8,000 mark.

Our page presents a daily blog of new listings, auctions closing and photography and also a huge gallery of daily mineral photo selections stretching back 3 years. If you visit the page please check out our Mineral Photos section.

Thanks to all the people who regularly check into e-Rocks on Facebook, and of course via the conventional home page and other daily links we put out.

Today was the first ever Leyburn show up there in the Yorkshire Dales.

Hosted by Tennant's Auctioneers there was an auction of minerals alongside the show at their fantastic premises.

In the picture is one of the lots as described in the catalogue;

"A Large Quantity of Worldwide Mixed Mineral Specimens, in three boxes."

Can you see what George saw in the first box?

Well if not look below!

Liroconite is just one of those minerals that attracts attention; it is rare, colourful and good specimens usually only found in old collections.

When a piece is listed on e-Rocks we usually get excited and this one is definitely no exception.

We saw this piece in person last month and it truly is a good one!

It is both rich and beautifully crystallised with sharp good crystals of a reasonable size, measured at 4mm. It also has a great heritage.

The specimen has already attracted attention and risen up our Hot Items leader board on the Home Page!

I am sure regular visitors to e-Rocks will remember a few "charity" auctions posted by Roger Lang, Montanpark we ran some months back.

These auctions were run by Roger to raise funds for LED display lighting for his local Mineral Museum at Imsbach, Germany.

Roger has been a volunteer at the Museum for some time and has worked hard with the remodelling project and also with the curation of the minerals on display.
 

This really "unique" specimen of fluorite from Cavnic, Romania sold on e-Rocks a few hours ago for €805 (c$900).

Not only is the specimen pretty exceptional but also I believe it holds the site record for bidding extension.

As the bidding rules go, an auction close time will extend by 10 minutes each time a bid is placed in close time. The auction will then end 10 minutes after the last bid is received.

We have seen some bidding duels in the past but last night's marathon possibly is the longest in our 10 years of service.

The Nick Bartlet collection, we purchased in 2004 still continues to provide interesting and uncommon items from its boxes.

This most recent discovery is a specimen of schröckingerite from the Peath Lode on the 17th Level at Geevor, Cornwall.

The find was limited and was made in May 1991 just before the pumps were turned off and the mine closed. Perhaps oddly this mineral has not been found (yet) elsewhere in Cornwall.

Carsten Slotta, of Mineral Treasure has this specimen of fluorite currently listed on e-Rocks.

From the lesser known Black Forest locality of Igelschlatt Mine, Waldshut the piece is covered in amazingly perfect hexakis-octahedral crystals.

(It should be added that Igelschlatt Mine is well known for both icositetrahedral and hexakis-octahedral fluorite crystals - see the locality link below for more details/pictures.)

It is not often you see this habit in real life, and not often you see such text book examples of this crystalisation.

Last Thursday we had a visit from Aamir Khan our good friend and supplier of all things from Pakistan/Afghanistan.

Aamir is based in the UK and Pakistan and spends his equally between the 2 places.

As usual he arrived with all kinds of minerals from his last trip to Peshawar.

A couple of things from Badakshan really caught my eye this time.

Firstly were some very deep blue/purple sapphire crystals.

Whilst sorting through some Tsumeb minerals recently we came across this label, with the dealer information cut off.

All we had to go on was the hand writing and a "crossed hammers" symbol on the left.

With a little help and research we have traced this to Rolf Fahle a well respected mineral dealer and authority on Tsumeb and Namibian minerals from the 1970s-1980s.

Fahle ran a business called Okavango minerals, and published a definitive list of Tsumeb minerals in 1977 working with Wolfgang Bartelke.

This old time specimen from Baia Sprie, Romania is quite rare and unusual.

It comprises myriad sheaves of clear baryte arranged in fern-like stacks. Within the body of the individual crystals there are vivid red inclusions of realgar, and forming a partial crust over is ochre yellow klebelsbergite, also one or two tiny sprays of stibnite.

Sadly storage and atmospheric conditions have not been kind to this piece and it is rapidly disintegrating.

So say hello and wave goodbye as this little gem is consigned to history.

For most of last week George, Frank and I have been on a European road trip.

We have recently bought a very large collection and went over to check it out.

Because we have been away some of our shipping has been delayed, but George will be catching up over the next few days.

All in all it was a great trip; there is an album below with some photos.

More details will follow on the collection shortly

Long time friend and e-Rocks seller Ikram Muhammad has been a source of many interesting and unusual minerals from Pakistan (and Afghanistan) over the years.

He has been involved with the correct identification of minerals and localities both here and on resources like Mindat.

One of his (and mine) favourite localities is Zagi Mountain, not so far from Peshawar the main trading hub for minerals and gems in Pakistan.

Coming up to the end of May and we are pleased to announce the return of two favourite e-Rocks sellers, Rocks of Africa and Kalahari Classics.

I have been interested in and collected Romanian minerals since 1975, I don't recall seeing a quartz crystal in section before.

This novelty specimen of quartz from Herja Romania shows some interesting internal features.

A crystal section cut and polished laterally and although full of veils and flaws there are sharply defined zones and margins.

Some of the larger flaws have dislocated the original face (zone) which then appears to be mirrored on the outside surface of the crystal, however the flaw also extends through to the face.

This chance discovery in the TVM shed turned out to be very interesting indeed.

The specimen itself comprises very rich crystalline cinnabar in quartz matrix, coming to us from old collection material from Germany.

Labelled simply as Grube Sizma, b. Konya, Turkey it was not a place I had come across before so some research was needed.

This is what I was able to find out:

Geography

We just put this specimen of realgar and quartz out onto the website for an upcoming auction.

Recovered in circa 2000 just before the "big find" of realgar at Baia Sprie, this specimen displays wonderful contrast between the white and greys of the associated quartz matrix and the bright crimsom-red hightlights of the realgar.

An almost perfect match for the colour styles of e-Rocks. Although this is accidental, the original colour concept for the e-Rocks site back in 2006 was also found in nature, on the African Grey Parrot!