June 2018
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 ...
29 Jun, 2018Okoruso Fluorspar Mine From The Air - (Gecko Namibia (Pty) Ltd) Collectors of fluorite will already know of the vast array and plentiful supply of beautiful fluorite from Okoruso in Namibia. Specimen mining has been...
28 Jun, 2018Hot off the press, well not quite, it is time to update your labels and collection databases, the mineral eztite has been redefined; actually to quite a different structure to the original determination. Redefined by IMA in...
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,...
25 Jun, 2018As I posted yesterday's blog covering Roger's venture into Scottish gold panning I decided to share it into the excellent Facebook group Collectors of British Minerals - also known as COBM. I am sure I have mentioned this...
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...
23 Jun, 2018Back in February 2016 we created a short blog "Pull Your Fingerite" about a BBC article (and others) covering a paper by Dr Robert Hazen, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, and Prof Jesse Ausubel of The...
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...
21 Jun, 2018It is time to announce the latest 10,000 minerals have been added to the e-Rocks database, this time it is an all American honour - or should I say honor? Michael Cline of Uravan Minerals (USA) brought up item 660000 earlier...
21 Jun, 2018Luigi Chiappino of Systematica called up a new mineral today - Albertiniite - to be added to the mineral database. This new species recently approved and published by the IMA is quite a straight forward iron(II) sulphite, ...
20 Jun, 2018Whilst doing some tidying on the website I came across the mineral postite recently listed. I needed to check out the composition the relation to other minerals. It was not long before I was looking into the range of...
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...
