Blogs
06 Oct, 2017We recently uncovered a specimen of botroidal marcasite and siderite from Hector Mine near Ibbenbüren in Münsterland (North-West Germany). The specimen itself is typical of the "schalen" or shell type ore formations...
01 Oct, 2017We came across this specimen in material from the Alex Franz collection, formerly belonging Hans-Peter Schroder and dated 1972. The piece is a flat backed sandstone matrix covered in pyromorphite but also small octahedral...
22 Sep, 2017Back in 2009 the late Paul Lowe was disposing of the mineral collection of the late Dr Fred Armitage. Dr Armitage lectured in Chemistry at London Universities from the 1970s until the early 2000s. He had a huge interest in...
20 Sep, 2017Mining areas above Niaslo village (courtesy Ikram Minerology) Recently reading about a new discovery of hematite from Morocco seen at Denver Show reminded me of the locality Niaslo,...
01 Jan, 2017Wishing all our visitors, sellers and buyers a very Happy New Year and great things from 2017. Thinking things over this morning I had a sobering thought; there are now 357 days left before Christmas 2017 and the next...
31 Dec, 2016This discovery in the Ted Smithson Collection and a previous entry by Mike Brooke led me to look into the background of these microscopic grains of gold from Sutherland in Scotland. The sheer amount of time - 24 hours -...
14 Dec, 2016Ever had a discussion along the lines of "I have this old specimen, but it has no labels so I am not sure of where or what it is?" Most of us have and the mystery sometimes never gets solved, we have quite a pile here, which...
06 Dec, 2016It has already been a week since Oxford show and we are heavily into our pre-Christmas preparations. Last week we had a visit from Ed Loye, who stopped by to take a look at the TV Towers operation. We have known Ed since...
22 Nov, 2016It is already nearly a few months since we returned from our eventful trip to Alicante with the Uerpmann collection; when we returned we parked a large portion of the unseen collection in our warehouse. All this material had...
25 Oct, 2016It is that time of year again and I am sure you will have noticed a number of "Munich" themed auctions lining up on the schedule. Suffice to say there have been some tremendous minerals coming through and still more to come...
15 Oct, 2016It hardly seems a week since Bakewell show last Saturday, where does the time go! We had a great time and despite the intention of not picking up too much stuff, it would be rude not to take part in the now ritual hunt for...
05 Oct, 2016During September we undertook the appraisal and purchase of Peter Uuerpmann's collection located in Guadamar Del Segura near Alicante, Spain. As the collection was in secure storage there were some challenges in getting...
