-
I have had this little box of granular and crystalline gold on my desk since 2007. It originates from Pilgrims Rest, Witwatersrand in South Africa.
It belonged to the Warren Taylor collection part of which will be making a splash later on in the year....
-
If you’ve tried to hunt for minerals using a metal detector, you are familiar with the challenges. Especially if you are looking for, say, silver at an abandoned mine where all of the structures have been leveled to the ground. Trash is everywhere. Old...
-
This wulfenite specimen was news at Ste Marie Show in 2005, it was part of small find brought to the show by Guangha (George) Liu.
The locality was given as Mian Ning Mine in Sichuan, China. At the time there was a lot of discussion, but the find was...
-
Recently I obtained a specimen from Tsumeb without a name.
It underwent elemental analysis and turned out to be beudantite.
This case shows that elemental analysis can be very useful. Even if the precision is limited, in the most cases EDS allows to...
-
James Tennant (1808-1881) was in his time one of the UK's most notable mineralogists and dealers in minerals, fossils and shells.
His specimens can be found in many museums around the globe, and in many notable historic collections.
In his heyday he...
-
George pulled this out of a box in the warehouse and challenged me to make a decent spin of this. Black & white minerals are proving quite hard to photograph in the new box, this one has lots tiny detail and depth of field.
Aegirine - Mount Malosa,...
-
Ever 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 sometimes has a happy ending...
-
A little bit of excitement for a new discovery/identification of bazzite in the Western Alps, Piedmont, Italy.
Usually highly sought after by collectors, bazzite is a rare scandium rich type of beryl usually small with a charateristic strong baby blue...
-
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...
-
Today we saw our e-Rocks User registration count reach 7500; this means that barring the odd D.Duck and K.Kong we are connected to 7500 mineral collectors worldwide.
Great news if you are prospective seller, re-assuring if you have not already signed...
-
In the office this morning I worked out some interesting e-Rocks facts for the last year.
In 2016 we have run 1555 auctions with 59,373 listings added to the site. We have sold 49,161 items.
Also in 2016 we have served 629,183 visitors with 6.45M pages...
-
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...
-
This 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 - required to pan 100 or so flakes...
-
Having recently changed over from bridge photography to DSLR and discovered the joys of stacking and rotational presentations, photography here has changed a lot in the last few months.
Previously seeing other people's macro photos has always left me...
-
Before we say good bye to our old website we have just passed invoice #350000.
From our count start at 175762, we have raised a total of 174238 orders since we started in January 2006.
By the time we leave we should reach 175,000 completed sales.
Our old...
-
13th & 14th August 2016 is a date for all UK based collectors to add to your diaries....
........there is a new show being added to the UK mineral show circuit.
Derbyshire based Don Edwards in conjunction with Tennants Auctioneers are launching the...
-
This leiteite specimen from the Uerpmann collection recently posted on Facebook brought back fond memories of the man who's name was given to the mineral back in 1977.
Leiteite was named to honour Luis Antonio Bravo Teixeira-Leite (1942–1999), Portuguese...
-
GPSmineral, located mineralogy, is a new project that wants to share mineralogy passion all around the world, we have started with a few articles about spanish, italian and USA mineralogy.
We have a map to locate.
For the moment we only have one...
-
Marc Allen Fleischer owner of the Fleischer Museum has been showing of this interesting specimen from Tsumeb.
One of the main directions of the Fleischer collection is "Rough and Cut" where a mineral is displayed side by side as natural mineral with a...
-
Here we are enjoying a fairly non mineralogical week away in Harlech, Wales.
This seagull apparently comes with the rental, certainly knows when the meal times are, and if not on time will tap at the window.
As seagulls go, he is very placid.
-
George has been working with us for nearly 6 months and the mess in the shed is beginning to get organised - it is a very big shed!
Recently pulled out of a box of dealer stock I bought from Liz and Dave Hacker over 10 years ago is this Florence Mine...
-
Not well known for its mineral collecting Albania seldom figures as a source in many collections or available minerals.
In 9 years of e-Rocks we have only ever seen 2 specimens and localities.
The current specimen is a newly "discovered" combination of...
-
George and I are back from our Christmas road trip into Germany via Belgium and France.
What we didn't pick up in minerals we certainly made up for with adventure and festive fun.
Normal service with email replies etc will return from today, after a bit...
-
I found this petrified “hamburger” among the landscaping cobbles at my old house. It is a water-worn limestone rock that has a layer of fossilized creatures. We keep it on display in a McDonald’s container and bring it out for show and tell regularly....
-
These amazing images recently appeared in the Journal of American Chemistry Society.
The picture shows individual molecules obtained by microscopy - the scale is mindblowing - 1 Angstrom length is 1 X 10-10m.
Amazing to see how the structures that have...
-
Burn's Night comes along every year and is mostly a Scottish based celebration of the poet Robbie Burns, so I try to get some "haggis neeps and tatties" in my diet during this time.
It also serves to remind us that another e-Rocks anniversary is coming...
-
Wishing 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 planned "dark day" with no auctions...
-
Facebook friend and collector Michael Pfeil posted a gallery of fine micro photos of specimens collected in the Bergischen Land area of North Rhine - Westphalia.
Here is a translation of his album introduction and a few of his 165 photos.
"In this album...
-
This unusual specimen featured in my Christmas auction in 2013/2014.
Smithsonite Psm Calcite.
Whatley Quarry, Somerset, UK.
Size: H:12.7cm x W:9.4cm x D:6.6cm
Largest Crystal: 2cm
-
A feature we have added to the new e-Rocks is a simple "add Mineral photo" posting tool.
We wanted to give all collaborators on the site an option to post mineral photos (without going through a collection/full upload.)
We have a simple quick option...
-
A month ago we replaced our photography system from a very old but very fast and reliable bridge camera to DSLR.
We also started using LED lighting - we have a unit with 7 dimmable and programmable panels all around. This is great for flooding the image...
-
What a great picture of Texan collector Jim Spann up close with an amazingly good specimen of plumbogummite after pyromorphite from China.
I believe there is a general consensus that this is one of the largest/best specimens there is from this recent...
-
Story covered by BBC local news for Derbyshire.
I am not sure if this is the same "discovery" made a few years back or something new.
Certainly it looks a good deposit of usable Blue John, brilliant news for the Blue John fraternity and crafts people....
-
It 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 both his and our early days, and...
-
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...
-
At Oxford show last weekend Geologist Nick Eastwood was selling a small batch of fluorite specimens he has collected in the 1970s when he was working in the Dale.
The specimens are from the Red Vein Lead Mine (or Level) a separate portal onto the Red...
-
Flicking through the auctions yesterday I spotted a specimen of Mineevite-(Y) - always inquisitive to see the composition of these more obscure minerals I looked at the mineral data.
I was even more curious to discover that in the formula, was the...
-
Love this photo posted by Megan Scott showing behind the scenes with e-Rocks seller Jason Smith, AKA Bucket of Holes Minerals.
Jason has been active on e-Rocks now since December 2012 and has been providing a super range of rare and interesting minerals...
-
Expert photographer and mineral collector from Austria, Andreas Schmid has recently being showing some excellent photographs using a light source at an extreme angle to the faces of the subject crystals.
I would have trouble explaining the physics...
-
Back in November 2011 I offered this specimen in my birthday auction.
It is still one of my favourite Weardale specimens ever.
Here is its listing
Fluorite
Heights Quarry, County Durham, United Kingdom
Miniature (4.5-7 cm)
Size: H:4.8cm x W:4.8cm x D:4....
-
A warm welcome to new seller and excellent photographer Andreas Schmid from Austria.
Andreas is the first new seller to join us since we opened the new site. Selling as Just Minerals you will see his first offerings specimens in Auction 1279.
He has...
-
Back in early 2004 I offered a suite of minerals from Palabora mine collected by John Gliddon when he worked there.
This specimen was part of that collection that never sold and became misplaced in our stock system.
It was discovered recently dusty and...
-
The Hampshire Mineral & Fossil show is on Saturday 5th September 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...
-
There has been a sensational recent find of fluorite in Connemara, County Galway, in the Republic of Ireland.
TVM has been given exclusive access to the locality and has been given first refusal to the material released by the owners.
Map of Connemara,...
-
We are really pleased to announce the arrival of David Eicher's book The New Cosmos coming out in November.
David is the editor in chief of the Astronomy magazine and has been associated with e-Rocks as both a buyer and seller almost since we started...
-
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...
-
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...
-
A new feature on e-Rocks for both sellers and collectors is the ability to add analysis information to specimens in their inventory.
Too often important analytical information is posted as an "aside" to the main pictures and not very readable.
Here you...
-
The project to open a pit to extract tungsten at Hemerdon has been going for a few years, but now it has entered into production with the first concentrate being produced.
As reported by the Plymouth Herald "it represents another major milestone in the...
-
Well not really, but as things have quietened down a bit in the week since launch it seemed a good opportunity to display a few minerals myself.
The barite samples are placed in a new feature page for single item listings - Open Market.
Open Market can...
-
We got up early this morning and traveled to Heathrow, and then on to Munich, arriving at 15:00 local time.
Although the show officially opens on Friday and many dealers have not arrived yet, there is already so much to see and take in; it feels as if...
-
This excellent large specimen of smithsonite was one of a large suite of smithsonite in Warren Taylor's main Tsumeb collection.
The piece is a mound of flattened crystals pink in colour with an orange "cadmium derived" coating to the surface.
Collected...
-
In our current TVM auction we have added a few specimens from the Warren Taylor collection.
We have known Warren for 15 years and have handled and advised on the disposal of a great number of his minerals since 2007.
Within our database we have set up a...
-
A bit of a surprise showed up today when going through some Madagascan specimens for auction.
Packed away in thumbnail box labelled "Tourmaline Rubellite - Ambalamatsara" was this super little specimen of scheelite from Baia Sprie - Romania.
These much...
-
This amazing specimen of dolomite was collected today from the mines at Trepca in Kosovo.
Well known for its excellent common sulphide and carbonate crystallisation, I have never seen on like this before!
-
We have just corrected a glitch in one of our email servers.
The glitch had resulted in a backlog of unsent messages.
I have set the server to send these out now, apologies if some of the messages are out of date.
Current invoices will be included in...
-
e-Rocks seller and field collector Tasos Tsinidis has recently been collecting these fine sanidine specimens at the locality, Kakourou Peak, Promachoi, Pella Prefecture, Central Macedonia, Greece.
Tasos also kindly posted these photos of the collecting...
-
On 12th August 2005 we relocated family and business to what we affectionately call Thames Valley Towers in Twyford, Reading.
I thought it would be fun to reproduce and share our original posting covering the event, funny how 10 years later though not...
-
Back in 1979 at a place called Tomahawk Creek near to Rubyvale in Central Queensland, Australia, a 2020 carat (404gr) yellow gem sapphire was discovered.
The story alleges that a local boy, on his way home from school, spotted the gem exposed in loose...
-
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.
Both sellers are based in South Africa and specialise in a very fine range of minerals from this part of...
-
Great news from Thames Valley Minerals; we have just completed the acquisition of the final suites of specimens in the Warren Taylor mineral collection.
Warren (and the Taylor family) have achieved recent fame as the people behind the Rainbow of Africa...
-
Today was the 4th in the 2015 series of Oxford Shows.
A fair early autumn day, and a short drive for me meant a nice morning out.
This time the show was more modestly attended with a few of the usual dealers not present, through holiday etc.
Still good...
-
As an online seller it is always good to hear something we have sent out has been received and lived up to expectations.
Here is one from Leor Goldberg recently published on Facebook.
Recent acquisition! Gypsum with included thometzekite on matrix. Both...
-
I spotted this specimen in the latest Sal Minerals auction.
Salvator was puzzled enough by the colour and habit of the cranberry tourmaline crystals to have these analysed.
The results came back as Darrellhenryite, a rare tourmaline member only known...
-
As Facebook does, this fantastic specimen photo posted by Val Collins in May 2012 appeared in my timeline today.
Not many of these specimens of cerussite with pyromorphite from Daoping Mine appeared, this must be one of the best examples.
Thanks to...
-
Another nice day out in Cornwall for Mike Berry & Mike Merry.
On this trip they visited Perran St George Mine, Perranporth, Cornwall during a Spring tide, when the entrance is better exposed.
Spectacular scenery and a couple of nice micros of...
-
Was happy to see a nice post from Marc Allen Fleischer of the Fleischer Museum on Facebook the other day.
Mark had recently purchased and received the above Megiliggar apatite from TVM.
This is his post, "You don’t expect to find a Pegmatite in England...
-
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,...
-
What a great start to Munich Show 2015 it has been.
We arrived at the Show at around 1400Hrs local time and things were already buzzing.
Almost immediately we were directed to the booth of Wendell Minerals to look three! cabinet sized fluorite specimens...
-
A very long and interesting day and we have settled ourselves into our new e-Rocks home.
Graham our fantastic developer has turned in(I hope)for the night and George is driving back to Bristol.
Thanks to all the people who have sent us messages, and...
-
Calamaite is the third natural Ti dominant sulfate mineral known yet. Russian scientists recognized this phase, occuring as filigrane colourless sprays, while doing some analytical investigations in a matrix of coquimbite / römerite. Type locality is...
-
A large block of native iron and weighing approx 20 tonnes. It was brought to the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet in Stockholm Sweden in 1870 by boat and horse-drawn carriage from Greenland's West Coast by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld to a large fanfare.
Naturally...
-
As previously mentioned yesterday's show was dedicated to the memory of Paul Lowe who had organised the show since 1993. It was great to see so many people there.
Paul's children Matt and Emma had arranged some photo tributes to Paul as well as being on...
-
Tomii Mine in Tochigi Prefecture, Honshu Island, Japan is quite well known for its quartz and amethyst clusters with crystals arranged in sprays around a central crystal.
This specimen recently posted on Facebook by Shigeki Nishimura in the Quartz group...
-
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....
-
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...
-
For those of you who check out my personal timeline on Facebook you will already be aware that I keep this fed with a steady stream of mineral photographs and sometimes (not so) witty captions!
I just do this for a bit of entertainment and interaction as...
-
Salvatore Natalizia is continuing with the sale of his mineral collection today with another 107 items closing tonight.
Some really excellent and quite large classic specimens are on offer - see photo gallery below, or follow the link to the auction....
-
It was down to Carsten to wrap up August 2015, and boy did he find something a bit unusual!
Brunogeierite is an insanely rare iron germanate found only (so far) in a few places, plus Tsumeb. The crystal habit is black octahedral crystals.
For a Tsumeb...
-
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...
-
New book announced - Genesis & Classifying Agates & Jaspers: A New Theory, By
Marco Campos-Venuti
In English
As described,
Cracked one of the greatest mysteries of the geology!
A Guide for the collector.
A Bible for a geologist.
This book shows...
-
Gwennap Pit started out as a sharp indentation in the landscape caused by mining subsidence in the mid C18th.
It gained a reputation as an outdoor "church" when John Welsey preached there no less than 18 times between 1762 and 1789.
After Wesley's death...
-
Currently on offer in Sal's Mineral auction - see Item Reference link below.
This gold nugget is from Bendigo, Victoria, Australia and weighs in at 59gr with dimensions 3.5 × 2.5 × 2 cm.
In terms of size and weight of gold this is one the biggest gold...
-
US collector Breck P Kent recently showed of his wonderful specimen of calcite from Stank Mine in the (then Lancashire) part of iron mining area of Cumbria, North West England.
Stank Mine is famous for its scalenohedral calcite, often with characteristic...
-
e-Rocks seller and Austrian collector Andreas Wallisch has been showing off a new addition to his collection.
A fine specimen of a variety of Lumachelle, called Bleiberg Shell Marble (Muschelmarmor)from Bleiberg in Carinthia in Austria.
This particular...
-
Here is some information about an article published on the BBC website yesterday concerning a paper shortly to appear in the American Mineralogist.
Authored by Dr Robert Hazen, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, and Prof Jesse Ausubel of The...
-
Today is Halloween, a fun time of dressing up, lighting lanterns and "trick or treating".
Our own ghoul face agate lives all year round on a shelf with the family pictures above our stairs. We bought him back in 2000 when Christian (my wife) and I were...
-
Mike Merry, Cornish Collector and Dealer of Minerals and Bottles took some spectacular photos of the the Cligga cliffs in Cornwall whilst out collecting.
Captured on a sunny June day (15 June 2015) the weather and sea were just about perfect.
To crown it...
-
Rupert Harrison recently posted these pictures of Ed Retallack, retired quarry manager for Dean Quarry, St Keverne, Lizard, Cornwall.
It features Ed holding his best collected specimen with the locality in the distance behind him.
To me, another...
-
Coming up on 18th May 2016 is a huge auction of antique books at the German Auction house Reis & Sohn, Königstein, Germany.
Within the "Manuscript & Geography" section there are a number of fascinating early books (18th to 20th century) on...
-
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...
-
Here is an old book, with a wonderful fantasy cover.
It would be hard not to pick up this combination of graphics and illustrations and look inside.
Schubert's Natural History of the mineral kingdom for school and home dates to the late 1880s and was...
-
One more yellow sphalerite, this one from Spain, 18+ct "Markoh-i-noor" cut, best choice to boost the dispersion!
Sphalerite Cut & Photo by Egor Gavrilenko
-
Reading something on Facebook by Ru Smith reminded me of this story about the demise of one of Cleveland's (now Yorkshire) more prominent land marks.
The hill was originally a "Sugar Loaf", outlying the North Yorkshire Moors. The geology is sandstone...
-
Always fun to see some good collecting going on, this time USA style with some "big" results.
Georgia based digger Jason Barrett posted these photos of the results of a joint dig a few months ago with Brandon Coleman, Larry Michon, Michael Lieb, Gina...
-
Here is a great picture of Australian collector/miner Dehne MacLaughlin, taken in 1966 at Allies Mine, Deepwater, NSW, Australia. Dehne is showing off some quartz crystals recently collected.
I have known Dehne since 2001 and since 2009 he has been...
-
Six o'clock tonight was the end of our last full day at Munich 2016.
We are back tomorrow but will be leaving early to travel back to the UK.
Some great memories of the show this year but only just enough time for meeting and speaking to everyone we...
-
Not really a new year's resolution as such, but to make space for new projects, it is time to sell my old collection/hoard of Romanian minerals.
Back in the day, before 2002 I put together quite a large selection of Romanian pieces, traveling there when...
-
We just acquired a little stash of Peruvian silver minerals and received a nice surprise when we discovered one of the boxes was double layered with these little pill boxes underneath.
Unfortunately there are no labels on the boxes so there is no way of...
-
Hedyphane is seldom seen from Tsumeb, but here it is formed out in small flat hexagonal crystals with white faces resting on a bed of pale green calcio-duftite.
There are more excellent photographs and a specimen currently listed on e-Rocks by Christian...
Blog entryI have had this little box of granular and crystalline gold on my desk since 2007. It originates from Pilgrims Rest, Witwatersrand in South Africa. It belonged to the Warren Taylor collection part of which will be making a splash later on in the year....
Blog entryIf you’ve tried to hunt for minerals using a metal detector, you are familiar with the challenges. Especially if you are looking for, say, silver at an abandoned mine where all of the structures have been leveled to the ground. Trash is everywhere. Old...
Blog entryThis wulfenite specimen was news at Ste Marie Show in 2005, it was part of small find brought to the show by Guangha (George) Liu. The locality was given as Mian Ning Mine in Sichuan, China. At the time there was a lot of discussion, but the find was...
Blog entryRecently I obtained a specimen from Tsumeb without a name. It underwent elemental analysis and turned out to be beudantite. This case shows that elemental analysis can be very useful. Even if the precision is limited, in the most cases EDS allows to...
Blog entryJames Tennant (1808-1881) was in his time one of the UK's most notable mineralogists and dealers in minerals, fossils and shells. His specimens can be found in many museums around the globe, and in many notable historic collections. In his heyday he...
Blog entryGeorge pulled this out of a box in the warehouse and challenged me to make a decent spin of this. Black & white minerals are proving quite hard to photograph in the new box, this one has lots tiny detail and depth of field. Aegirine - Mount Malosa,...
Blog entryEver 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 sometimes has a happy ending...
Blog entryA little bit of excitement for a new discovery/identification of bazzite in the Western Alps, Piedmont, Italy. Usually highly sought after by collectors, bazzite is a rare scandium rich type of beryl usually small with a charateristic strong baby blue...
Blog entrySeptember 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...
Blog entryToday we saw our e-Rocks User registration count reach 7500; this means that barring the odd D.Duck and K.Kong we are connected to 7500 mineral collectors worldwide. Great news if you are prospective seller, re-assuring if you have not already signed...
Blog entryIn the office this morning I worked out some interesting e-Rocks facts for the last year. In 2016 we have run 1555 auctions with 59,373 listings added to the site. We have sold 49,161 items. Also in 2016 we have served 629,183 visitors with 6.45M pages...
Blog entryAfter 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...
Blog entryThis 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 - required to pan 100 or so flakes...
Blog entryHaving recently changed over from bridge photography to DSLR and discovered the joys of stacking and rotational presentations, photography here has changed a lot in the last few months. Previously seeing other people's macro photos has always left me...
Blog entryBefore we say good bye to our old website we have just passed invoice #350000. From our count start at 175762, we have raised a total of 174238 orders since we started in January 2006. By the time we leave we should reach 175,000 completed sales. Our old...
Blog entry13th & 14th August 2016 is a date for all UK based collectors to add to your diaries.... ........there is a new show being added to the UK mineral show circuit. Derbyshire based Don Edwards in conjunction with Tennants Auctioneers are launching the...
Blog entryThis leiteite specimen from the Uerpmann collection recently posted on Facebook brought back fond memories of the man who's name was given to the mineral back in 1977. Leiteite was named to honour Luis Antonio Bravo Teixeira-Leite (1942–1999), Portuguese...
Blog entryGPSmineral, located mineralogy, is a new project that wants to share mineralogy passion all around the world, we have started with a few articles about spanish, italian and USA mineralogy. We have a map to locate. For the moment we only have one...
Blog entryMarc Allen Fleischer owner of the Fleischer Museum has been showing of this interesting specimen from Tsumeb. One of the main directions of the Fleischer collection is "Rough and Cut" where a mineral is displayed side by side as natural mineral with a...
Blog entryHere we are enjoying a fairly non mineralogical week away in Harlech, Wales. This seagull apparently comes with the rental, certainly knows when the meal times are, and if not on time will tap at the window. As seagulls go, he is very placid.
Blog entryGeorge has been working with us for nearly 6 months and the mess in the shed is beginning to get organised - it is a very big shed! Recently pulled out of a box of dealer stock I bought from Liz and Dave Hacker over 10 years ago is this Florence Mine...
Blog entryNot well known for its mineral collecting Albania seldom figures as a source in many collections or available minerals. In 9 years of e-Rocks we have only ever seen 2 specimens and localities. The current specimen is a newly "discovered" combination of...
Blog entryGeorge and I are back from our Christmas road trip into Germany via Belgium and France. What we didn't pick up in minerals we certainly made up for with adventure and festive fun. Normal service with email replies etc will return from today, after a bit...
Blog entryI found this petrified “hamburger” among the landscaping cobbles at my old house. It is a water-worn limestone rock that has a layer of fossilized creatures. We keep it on display in a McDonald’s container and bring it out for show and tell regularly....
Blog entryThese amazing images recently appeared in the Journal of American Chemistry Society. The picture shows individual molecules obtained by microscopy - the scale is mindblowing - 1 Angstrom length is 1 X 10-10m. Amazing to see how the structures that have...
Blog entryBurn's Night comes along every year and is mostly a Scottish based celebration of the poet Robbie Burns, so I try to get some "haggis neeps and tatties" in my diet during this time. It also serves to remind us that another e-Rocks anniversary is coming...
Blog entryWishing 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 planned "dark day" with no auctions...
Blog entryFacebook friend and collector Michael Pfeil posted a gallery of fine micro photos of specimens collected in the Bergischen Land area of North Rhine - Westphalia. Here is a translation of his album introduction and a few of his 165 photos. "In this album...
Blog entryThis unusual specimen featured in my Christmas auction in 2013/2014. Smithsonite Psm Calcite. Whatley Quarry, Somerset, UK. Size: H:12.7cm x W:9.4cm x D:6.6cm Largest Crystal: 2cm
Blog entryA feature we have added to the new e-Rocks is a simple "add Mineral photo" posting tool. We wanted to give all collaborators on the site an option to post mineral photos (without going through a collection/full upload.) We have a simple quick option...
Blog entryA month ago we replaced our photography system from a very old but very fast and reliable bridge camera to DSLR. We also started using LED lighting - we have a unit with 7 dimmable and programmable panels all around. This is great for flooding the image...
Blog entryWhat a great picture of Texan collector Jim Spann up close with an amazingly good specimen of plumbogummite after pyromorphite from China. I believe there is a general consensus that this is one of the largest/best specimens there is from this recent...
Blog entryStory covered by BBC local news for Derbyshire. I am not sure if this is the same "discovery" made a few years back or something new. Certainly it looks a good deposit of usable Blue John, brilliant news for the Blue John fraternity and crafts people....
Blog entryIt 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 both his and our early days, and...
Blog entryCarsten 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...
Blog entryAt Oxford show last weekend Geologist Nick Eastwood was selling a small batch of fluorite specimens he has collected in the 1970s when he was working in the Dale. The specimens are from the Red Vein Lead Mine (or Level) a separate portal onto the Red...
Blog entryFlicking through the auctions yesterday I spotted a specimen of Mineevite-(Y) - always inquisitive to see the composition of these more obscure minerals I looked at the mineral data. I was even more curious to discover that in the formula, was the...
Blog entryLove this photo posted by Megan Scott showing behind the scenes with e-Rocks seller Jason Smith, AKA Bucket of Holes Minerals. Jason has been active on e-Rocks now since December 2012 and has been providing a super range of rare and interesting minerals...
Blog entryExpert photographer and mineral collector from Austria, Andreas Schmid has recently being showing some excellent photographs using a light source at an extreme angle to the faces of the subject crystals. I would have trouble explaining the physics...
Blog entryBack in November 2011 I offered this specimen in my birthday auction. It is still one of my favourite Weardale specimens ever. Here is its listing Fluorite Heights Quarry, County Durham, United Kingdom Miniature (4.5-7 cm) Size: H:4.8cm x W:4.8cm x D:4....
Blog entryA warm welcome to new seller and excellent photographer Andreas Schmid from Austria. Andreas is the first new seller to join us since we opened the new site. Selling as Just Minerals you will see his first offerings specimens in Auction 1279. He has...
Blog entryBack in early 2004 I offered a suite of minerals from Palabora mine collected by John Gliddon when he worked there. This specimen was part of that collection that never sold and became misplaced in our stock system. It was discovered recently dusty and...
Blog entryThe Hampshire Mineral & Fossil show is on Saturday 5th September 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...
Blog entryThere has been a sensational recent find of fluorite in Connemara, County Galway, in the Republic of Ireland. TVM has been given exclusive access to the locality and has been given first refusal to the material released by the owners. Map of Connemara,...
Blog entryWe are really pleased to announce the arrival of David Eicher's book The New Cosmos coming out in November. David is the editor in chief of the Astronomy magazine and has been associated with e-Rocks as both a buyer and seller almost since we started...
Blog entryWhilst 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...
Blog entryI 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...
Blog entryA new feature on e-Rocks for both sellers and collectors is the ability to add analysis information to specimens in their inventory. Too often important analytical information is posted as an "aside" to the main pictures and not very readable. Here you...
Blog entryThe project to open a pit to extract tungsten at Hemerdon has been going for a few years, but now it has entered into production with the first concentrate being produced. As reported by the Plymouth Herald "it represents another major milestone in the...
Blog entryWell not really, but as things have quietened down a bit in the week since launch it seemed a good opportunity to display a few minerals myself. The barite samples are placed in a new feature page for single item listings - Open Market. Open Market can...
Blog entryWe got up early this morning and traveled to Heathrow, and then on to Munich, arriving at 15:00 local time. Although the show officially opens on Friday and many dealers have not arrived yet, there is already so much to see and take in; it feels as if...
Blog entryThis excellent large specimen of smithsonite was one of a large suite of smithsonite in Warren Taylor's main Tsumeb collection. The piece is a mound of flattened crystals pink in colour with an orange "cadmium derived" coating to the surface. Collected...
Blog entryIn our current TVM auction we have added a few specimens from the Warren Taylor collection. We have known Warren for 15 years and have handled and advised on the disposal of a great number of his minerals since 2007. Within our database we have set up a...
Blog entryA bit of a surprise showed up today when going through some Madagascan specimens for auction. Packed away in thumbnail box labelled "Tourmaline Rubellite - Ambalamatsara" was this super little specimen of scheelite from Baia Sprie - Romania. These much...
Blog entryThis amazing specimen of dolomite was collected today from the mines at Trepca in Kosovo. Well known for its excellent common sulphide and carbonate crystallisation, I have never seen on like this before!
Blog entryWe have just corrected a glitch in one of our email servers. The glitch had resulted in a backlog of unsent messages. I have set the server to send these out now, apologies if some of the messages are out of date. Current invoices will be included in...
Blog entrye-Rocks seller and field collector Tasos Tsinidis has recently been collecting these fine sanidine specimens at the locality, Kakourou Peak, Promachoi, Pella Prefecture, Central Macedonia, Greece. Tasos also kindly posted these photos of the collecting...
Blog entryOn 12th August 2005 we relocated family and business to what we affectionately call Thames Valley Towers in Twyford, Reading. I thought it would be fun to reproduce and share our original posting covering the event, funny how 10 years later though not...
Blog entryBack in 1979 at a place called Tomahawk Creek near to Rubyvale in Central Queensland, Australia, a 2020 carat (404gr) yellow gem sapphire was discovered. The story alleges that a local boy, on his way home from school, spotted the gem exposed in loose...
Blog entryComing 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. Both sellers are based in South Africa and specialise in a very fine range of minerals from this part of...
Blog entryGreat news from Thames Valley Minerals; we have just completed the acquisition of the final suites of specimens in the Warren Taylor mineral collection. Warren (and the Taylor family) have achieved recent fame as the people behind the Rainbow of Africa...
Blog entryToday was the 4th in the 2015 series of Oxford Shows. A fair early autumn day, and a short drive for me meant a nice morning out. This time the show was more modestly attended with a few of the usual dealers not present, through holiday etc. Still good...
Blog entryAs an online seller it is always good to hear something we have sent out has been received and lived up to expectations. Here is one from Leor Goldberg recently published on Facebook. Recent acquisition! Gypsum with included thometzekite on matrix. Both...
Blog entryI spotted this specimen in the latest Sal Minerals auction. Salvator was puzzled enough by the colour and habit of the cranberry tourmaline crystals to have these analysed. The results came back as Darrellhenryite, a rare tourmaline member only known...
Blog entryAs Facebook does, this fantastic specimen photo posted by Val Collins in May 2012 appeared in my timeline today. Not many of these specimens of cerussite with pyromorphite from Daoping Mine appeared, this must be one of the best examples. Thanks to...
Blog entryAnother nice day out in Cornwall for Mike Berry & Mike Merry. On this trip they visited Perran St George Mine, Perranporth, Cornwall during a Spring tide, when the entrance is better exposed. Spectacular scenery and a couple of nice micros of...
Blog entryWas happy to see a nice post from Marc Allen Fleischer of the Fleischer Museum on Facebook the other day. Mark had recently purchased and received the above Megiliggar apatite from TVM. This is his post, "You don’t expect to find a Pegmatite in England...
Blog entryI 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,...
Blog entryWhat a great start to Munich Show 2015 it has been. We arrived at the Show at around 1400Hrs local time and things were already buzzing. Almost immediately we were directed to the booth of Wendell Minerals to look three! cabinet sized fluorite specimens...
Blog entryA very long and interesting day and we have settled ourselves into our new e-Rocks home. Graham our fantastic developer has turned in(I hope)for the night and George is driving back to Bristol. Thanks to all the people who have sent us messages, and...
Blog entryCalamaite is the third natural Ti dominant sulfate mineral known yet. Russian scientists recognized this phase, occuring as filigrane colourless sprays, while doing some analytical investigations in a matrix of coquimbite / römerite. Type locality is...
Blog entryA large block of native iron and weighing approx 20 tonnes. It was brought to the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet in Stockholm Sweden in 1870 by boat and horse-drawn carriage from Greenland's West Coast by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld to a large fanfare. Naturally...
Blog entryAs previously mentioned yesterday's show was dedicated to the memory of Paul Lowe who had organised the show since 1993. It was great to see so many people there. Paul's children Matt and Emma had arranged some photo tributes to Paul as well as being on...
Blog entryTomii Mine in Tochigi Prefecture, Honshu Island, Japan is quite well known for its quartz and amethyst clusters with crystals arranged in sprays around a central crystal. This specimen recently posted on Facebook by Shigeki Nishimura in the Quartz group...
Blog entryThis 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....
Blog entryGeorge 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...
Blog entryFor those of you who check out my personal timeline on Facebook you will already be aware that I keep this fed with a steady stream of mineral photographs and sometimes (not so) witty captions! I just do this for a bit of entertainment and interaction as...
Blog entrySalvatore Natalizia is continuing with the sale of his mineral collection today with another 107 items closing tonight. Some really excellent and quite large classic specimens are on offer - see photo gallery below, or follow the link to the auction....
Blog entryIt was down to Carsten to wrap up August 2015, and boy did he find something a bit unusual! Brunogeierite is an insanely rare iron germanate found only (so far) in a few places, plus Tsumeb. The crystal habit is black octahedral crystals. For a Tsumeb...
Blog entryFrequently 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...
Blog entryNew book announced - Genesis & Classifying Agates & Jaspers: A New Theory, By Marco Campos-Venuti In English As described, Cracked one of the greatest mysteries of the geology! A Guide for the collector. A Bible for a geologist. This book shows...
Blog entryGwennap Pit started out as a sharp indentation in the landscape caused by mining subsidence in the mid C18th. It gained a reputation as an outdoor "church" when John Welsey preached there no less than 18 times between 1762 and 1789. After Wesley's death...
Blog entryCurrently on offer in Sal's Mineral auction - see Item Reference link below. This gold nugget is from Bendigo, Victoria, Australia and weighs in at 59gr with dimensions 3.5 × 2.5 × 2 cm. In terms of size and weight of gold this is one the biggest gold...
Blog entryUS collector Breck P Kent recently showed of his wonderful specimen of calcite from Stank Mine in the (then Lancashire) part of iron mining area of Cumbria, North West England. Stank Mine is famous for its scalenohedral calcite, often with characteristic...
Blog entrye-Rocks seller and Austrian collector Andreas Wallisch has been showing off a new addition to his collection. A fine specimen of a variety of Lumachelle, called Bleiberg Shell Marble (Muschelmarmor)from Bleiberg in Carinthia in Austria. This particular...
Blog entryHere is some information about an article published on the BBC website yesterday concerning a paper shortly to appear in the American Mineralogist. Authored by Dr Robert Hazen, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, and Prof Jesse Ausubel of The...
Blog entryToday is Halloween, a fun time of dressing up, lighting lanterns and "trick or treating". Our own ghoul face agate lives all year round on a shelf with the family pictures above our stairs. We bought him back in 2000 when Christian (my wife) and I were...
Blog entryMike Merry, Cornish Collector and Dealer of Minerals and Bottles took some spectacular photos of the the Cligga cliffs in Cornwall whilst out collecting. Captured on a sunny June day (15 June 2015) the weather and sea were just about perfect. To crown it...
Blog entryRupert Harrison recently posted these pictures of Ed Retallack, retired quarry manager for Dean Quarry, St Keverne, Lizard, Cornwall. It features Ed holding his best collected specimen with the locality in the distance behind him. To me, another...
Blog entryComing up on 18th May 2016 is a huge auction of antique books at the German Auction house Reis & Sohn, Königstein, Germany. Within the "Manuscript & Geography" section there are a number of fascinating early books (18th to 20th century) on...
Blog entryFor 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...
Blog entryHere is an old book, with a wonderful fantasy cover. It would be hard not to pick up this combination of graphics and illustrations and look inside. Schubert's Natural History of the mineral kingdom for school and home dates to the late 1880s and was...
Blog entryOne more yellow sphalerite, this one from Spain, 18+ct "Markoh-i-noor" cut, best choice to boost the dispersion! Sphalerite Cut & Photo by Egor Gavrilenko
Blog entryReading something on Facebook by Ru Smith reminded me of this story about the demise of one of Cleveland's (now Yorkshire) more prominent land marks. The hill was originally a "Sugar Loaf", outlying the North Yorkshire Moors. The geology is sandstone...
Blog entryAlways fun to see some good collecting going on, this time USA style with some "big" results. Georgia based digger Jason Barrett posted these photos of the results of a joint dig a few months ago with Brandon Coleman, Larry Michon, Michael Lieb, Gina...
Blog entryHere is a great picture of Australian collector/miner Dehne MacLaughlin, taken in 1966 at Allies Mine, Deepwater, NSW, Australia. Dehne is showing off some quartz crystals recently collected. I have known Dehne since 2001 and since 2009 he has been...
Blog entrySix o'clock tonight was the end of our last full day at Munich 2016. We are back tomorrow but will be leaving early to travel back to the UK. Some great memories of the show this year but only just enough time for meeting and speaking to everyone we...
Blog entryNot really a new year's resolution as such, but to make space for new projects, it is time to sell my old collection/hoard of Romanian minerals. Back in the day, before 2002 I put together quite a large selection of Romanian pieces, traveling there when...
Blog entryWe just acquired a little stash of Peruvian silver minerals and received a nice surprise when we discovered one of the boxes was double layered with these little pill boxes underneath. Unfortunately there are no labels on the boxes so there is no way of...
Blog entryHedyphane is seldom seen from Tsumeb, but here it is formed out in small flat hexagonal crystals with white faces resting on a bed of pale green calcio-duftite. There are more excellent photographs and a specimen currently listed on e-Rocks by Christian...