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Sometimes even the most clearly labelled specimen will have you scratching your head in trying to find out what it is or where it is really from!
Working with old collections and labels it is possible to encounter changes in mineral names via...
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One of the key components of the new e-Rocks is our name checker.
Basically our software checks a mineral label/title and works out what minerals are present and sorts out any odd spellings or character differences.
It does some other clever things like...
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Jasun and Mandy McAvoy, AKA Mineralman999 have been recently showing off this fine and historic gem topaz crystal.
The crystal itself is a well terminated gem specimen from Murzinka, Ekaterinburg, Middle Urals, Russia and at 3.1cm x 2.7cm x 2.5cm it is...
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Jason Smith, one of our many regular sellers of interesting and obscure minerals or localities, was in discussion with me the other day. He happened to mention that he had acquired a liroconite specimen from Sterling Mine, in Sussex County, New Jersey....
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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...
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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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Ahead of our trip to Munich we have just installed another new feature for all users of e-Rocks and Facebook.
Within the e-Rocks Facebook page there are now 5 new page tabs with Apps that let you do the following.
e-Rocks Auctions
look up and open...
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You know you’re a rockhound when cries of “Froodite! I’ve got froodite” are heard echoing from the rafters. And before you step back in alarm, it’s not contagious… it’s the name of a mineral.
Please, allow me to make introductions. My husband Reiner and...
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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...
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Last weekend I was reading on the BBC website about the discovery of a "lost" portrait painting by Rubens of George Villiers, the 1st Duke of Buckingham (d.1628).
It turned out the painting was lost in plain view hanging and on public display in Glasgow'...
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Here we have yet another recently discovered mineral added to our database.
"Jinan Stone" was first collected in 2015 by Daisuke Nishio-Hamane of Tokyo University. It was referred to by this name prior to identification/classification as Jinan is the...
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So goes the advertising strapline, and my reaction to seeing this photograph of gold bars, coins, nuggets and mineral ore/specimens.
The haul of 30,000lbs, approx 1.5 tonnes was recovered from the wreck of the SS Central America from deep of off the...
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Some highlights from today's photography at TV Towers
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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...
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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...
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Our visit to Bakewell Show for another year is sadly over; but what an eventful couple of days it has been.
We arrived on the Friday night and after getting e-Rocks organised we headed off for the first meal out of the weekend.
The Friday night "Curry...
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George and I were on the road early today to visit the 2017 Sussex Mineral & Lapidary Society Show (SMLS) at Haywards Heath.
This was the first time we have been to the show since 2010; e-Rocker Trevor Devon also Treasurer of the SMLS suggested we...
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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...
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Belgian collector Jean Dehaye has recently been showing pictures of his recently collected specimen from Beez, Naumur, Belgium.
A little over 2cm across comprising a hollow fossil cast with calcified internal ribs covered with micro honey coloured...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Coming up to completion in today's Cartils minerals auction this specimen of obsidian from Douglas, Idaho, USA was designated item number 220000 in our catalogue when uploaded.
Our catalogue started back in January 2006, and has grown with some...
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Above, a 1.58 gram nugget of gold, resembling a lizard-like creature, with adherent quartz matrix, Zwedru, Liberia.
In the early 1980's a couple of good mates of mine were living in Monrovia, Liberia. While there, Linda & Simon visited an artisanal...
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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,...
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We are having quite a golden time for new mineral species additions to e-Rocks.
This short blog features news from from Jason Smith and Volker Betz regarding two new phosphate minerals from Foote Mine in North Carolina, USA. Apologies for the pun in the...
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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...
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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...
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As we have passed Thanksgiving and now moving into the Christmas festive period, you might want to indulge yourself in a box of chocolates to go along with the celebrations?
If so you might be interested in this listing from Norbert Stotzel starting...
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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...
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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...
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The Shinkolobwe radium mine, 1922. The Belgian mining engineer above is sitting on a 7 ton boulder of pitchblende. An immense quantity of gamma-rays is irradiating his gonads. Safety equipment, a tie and a pith helmet.
Unknowable to to the engineer,...
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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...
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The 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 -
α-sulphur, or orthorhombic...
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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...
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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...
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Those of you who read my last Oxford Show report will remember a mention of Paul Nicholson at Waveney Minerals.
We have known Paul as a collector for well over 15 years, and more recently as an occasional show dealer in the UK. As of the last Show report...
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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...
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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...
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Several months ago we could confirm tavagnascoite from the famous Bastnäs mines, well known for rich pink cerite specimens partially covered by haleniusite-La (first recognized by the e-rocks dealer nothernminerals) and also from the Sadisdorf region,...
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Quite often minerals appear online from places that one is never likely to visit, some places like Tsumeb or Trepca are well photographed and beautiful, some of course ugly.
One place I have never visualised is the Tatra mountains spanning Poland and...
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Drakewalls House is an unassuming white painted Victorian house on the edge of Gunnislake, Cornwall.
Here it is today currently being used as a guest house in the beautiful Tamar Valley; however to many mineral collectors this house will be remembered as...
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We 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 distributed across this area famous...
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Hoganite
Hoganite and paceite (along with calclacite) are currently the only known minerals containing the organic acetate ion (CH3CHO2)-
Minerals Containing the Acetate (Ethanoate) Ion
Calclacite
Ca(CH3COO)Cl · 5H2O
Hoganite
Cu(CH3COO)2 · H2O...
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After a short break we welcome back e-Rocks dealer – Jaroslaw Skupiewski, from Poland.
Under the banner Geo-Trader Minerals Jaroslaw has been establishing himself as an European show dealer for the last 12 years, but he has also been busy online.
His...
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Yesterday for a change I was inputting some rocks, and saw the magic item number 650,000 approaching with around 30 rocks to go.
As it happened the phone rang, and an hour later when I returned to saving the next item the counter had gone round to 650,...
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A lot earlier this morning George and his partner Sam became parents for the first time. Their little boy has been named Alexander Thomas Wrigley.
There are two knock on effects, I have become a grandparent, and George is now currently covering his new...
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I recently came across a reference to gold being worked at Cross Gill in the North Pennines. It’s in an 1873 article - On the Occurrence of Lead, Zinc, and Iron Ores, in some Rocks of Carboniferous Age in the North-West of England, by De Rance. This 18...
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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...
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Since we launched the new e-Rocks in September 2015 we have been busy behind the scenes working on small revisions and tweaks, plus of course doing all the other work in running the show.
Today we have just upgraded the site to unleash a whole lot of new...
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This week it was George's birthday but unfortunately work as usual in the TVM office.
As it happened plans were afoot to make some homemade cupcakes and sing happy birthday.
Not much chance of blowing the candle out though.
All video evidence/sound...
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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...
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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....
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Another feature we have put in place for the new website is a table of most popular searches on the site within the last 7 days.
A search counter increments each time during a session, a search term is entered. The table is displayed under "Searches" in...
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Introduction:
A few months ago I came across the mineral aldridegeite in the IMA list of minerals whilst doing some research. This sulphate mineral is a member of the develline group first discovered and only found at Broken Hill, New South Wales,...
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Last week I took a few days out to visit some favourite old haunts up in Weardale.
I have always loved the place and the mining and mineral heritage have created an enduring strange feeling of home from home when ever I visit.
The central purpose of my...
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Having worked with Madagascan minerals over a number of years, grandidierite has always been a interesting and hard to get hold of mineral.
The story went that there were a few localities close to each other in the south of Madagascar near Fort Dauphin;...
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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...
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A little "smoke gets in your eyes" moment today as we said goodbye to Chris Mavris who has been helping us for the last 9 months.
Behind the scenes at e-Rocks Chris has been diligently working away at some "special" projects for us which we will be...
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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...
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Now veteran e-Rocks seller Ikram Muhammad of Pakistan Minerals celebrates his birthday today.
Marking the occasion is the finale of his birthday auction, featuring this cracking specimen of beryl var vorobyevite from Afghanistan.
Vorobyevite is a...
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Analytical investigations of the germanite and renierite associated secondary minerals have lead to the discoveries of many unique minerals eg. otjisumeite, bartelkeite, stottite from the Tsumeb Mine, Otavi Highlands, Namibia in the past decades.
There...
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Giuseppe Siccardi of Yourmineral Collection in Italy emailed me at the end of last month to tell me of some changes with his business.
Giuseppe has been trading under Yourmineral collection (item code YMC) with e-Rocks since the end of 2007.
Now 10 years...
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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...
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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...
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As we head towards Twelfth Night and the final demise of Christmas trees worldwide, we have got back to work with quite a bump.
Over the last few days we have been finalising a very large software release and plan to get this deployed in the next week or...
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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...
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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...
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Today 30 December is the last day of auctions for e-Rocks in 2017, and quite a year it has been both on and off "the pitch".
The Piatek Minerals auction closing at 23:40 tonight will be the final and 1839th auction during 2017; a year when we have...
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Whilst 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 minerals containing the decavanadate...
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Luigi 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, formula - Fe2+(SO3)·3H2O.
The...
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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...
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Along with everything else that is going on we have been doing some background work on some phosphate minerals spurred on by a request by seller Modris Baum (LMB Minerals) and something he had discovered on a Brazilian hureaulite specimen.
Modris has...
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Here I am back in the office on a wet and dull Monday morning after the 2018 Bakewell Show. Having spent a “full on” weekend in the bosom of the UK mineral collecting scene I am feeling a little bit tired.
As usual George and I drove up to Bakewell from...
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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...
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Saturday morning, September 2014, we were up bright and early and on the road to Fernleigh, Ontario. Unless you are a mineral collector, you likely will not have heard of the it.
We were looking for a kyanite and staurolite occurrence. Actually, I was...
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Some interesting additions made to the e-Rocks catalogue from new seller Marco Frigerio of Classic Rocks and Gems, for both Iridium Chalk and Iridium Clay: these are examples of an iridium rich sediment found localised in unique layers in deposits...
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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...
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Dont forget as of 1st October 2017, the e-Rocks.com website will be transferring to ownership by e-Rocks Ltd.
Please refer to our previous notice, linked below.
Looking forward to our new jobs on Monday: as rock group the Who said back in 1971 in the...
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Helga Palmer and Gordon Fielder recently unearthed this copper token dated 1788 from the Parys Mountain Copper Mining Company at West Basset in Cornwall.
By eighteenth century standards this little token had traveled a long way from home, but with a...
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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...
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It was in August last year that we reported the our page on Facebook had reached 8,000 likes, well now we have risen to the 10,000 mark.
We continue to use our page to provide our Facebook followers a daily snapshot of the e-Rocks site new listings,...
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Andyrobertsite and calcioandyrobertsite are two fascinating mineral species present in a single very famous specimen from Tsumeb. This superb specimen was featured in the cover of the Mineralogical Record vol.30, num. 3, May-June 1999, jointly with the...
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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...
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For those who regularly use our Search feature to find minerals listed on e-Rocks, we have just launched a new feature to help get to the latest items.
We have created a new filter in your relevant search results that will allow you to view any minerals...
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As it is 31st December no auctions will be closing today on e-Rocks, however the holiday program continues tomorrow with the first auctions in 2016.
Many thanks to all our customers, sellers and buyers for all your contributions and our success in 2015...
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Congratulations to Chris Spiromitros of Greekrocks - he has just updated/upgraded his website.
He is also the first Dealer to put his e-Rocks auctions on his website using our Page App.
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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...
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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....
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Out for a run last night and listening to the radio, in particular an excerpt about Greek mythology being discussed by Stephen Fry.
Not my usual digest but it has been one of those weeks!
Anyway the piece was about Dionysus the Ancient Greek god of wine...
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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...
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Every alpine collector's dream (and most other people too) is to find the perfect pocket.
Austrian Strahler Peter Eberhard has been busy on the Alps at Habachtal.
Earlier this month Peter was investigating a previously worked opening high up in the...
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On our way home, we recently encountered an unusual - for mineral collectors - scenery: a snow-covered Saint Marie-aux-Mines!
With these pictures Plinius Earth Treasures wishes all its e-rocks friends a Happy 2018 full of health, joy and new specimens....
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Recently 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, Italy, the specimen is part of...
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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...
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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...
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I was in our archive TVM site researching something and chanced upon this blog entry from 13 years ago.
Although not quite our first the content is quite interesting and certainly gives some insight into way back then, and how numbers have expanded...
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Here is another odd mineral featured in Armin Scholer's current auction.
Kaiyuhite was first proposed as a new mineral back in the 1980s by young mining geologist Tony Dunn, who had noticed and collected this silver-grey metallic material whilst...
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A feature of the new website is the ability of our Database and your catalogue to hold and display items by Provenance.
Behind the scenes we provide a whole inventory system that connects minerals to people, collectors, historic dealers and institutions...
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March Oxford show is the first of the 2016 series of Oxford shows.
A small show but quite well attended this time was no different; it is a good opportunity to meet up with people after the winter months and Tucson.
Personally suffering from "Manflu" I...
Blog entrySometimes even the most clearly labelled specimen will have you scratching your head in trying to find out what it is or where it is really from! Working with old collections and labels it is possible to encounter changes in mineral names via...
Blog entryOne of the key components of the new e-Rocks is our name checker. Basically our software checks a mineral label/title and works out what minerals are present and sorts out any odd spellings or character differences. It does some other clever things like...
Blog entryJasun and Mandy McAvoy, AKA Mineralman999 have been recently showing off this fine and historic gem topaz crystal. The crystal itself is a well terminated gem specimen from Murzinka, Ekaterinburg, Middle Urals, Russia and at 3.1cm x 2.7cm x 2.5cm it is...
Blog entryJason Smith, one of our many regular sellers of interesting and obscure minerals or localities, was in discussion with me the other day. He happened to mention that he had acquired a liroconite specimen from Sterling Mine, in Sussex County, New Jersey....
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 entrySaturday 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...
Blog entryAhead of our trip to Munich we have just installed another new feature for all users of e-Rocks and Facebook. Within the e-Rocks Facebook page there are now 5 new page tabs with Apps that let you do the following. e-Rocks Auctions look up and open...
Blog entryYou know you’re a rockhound when cries of “Froodite! I’ve got froodite” are heard echoing from the rafters. And before you step back in alarm, it’s not contagious… it’s the name of a mineral. Please, allow me to make introductions. My husband Reiner and...
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 entryLast weekend I was reading on the BBC website about the discovery of a "lost" portrait painting by Rubens of George Villiers, the 1st Duke of Buckingham (d.1628). It turned out the painting was lost in plain view hanging and on public display in Glasgow'...
Blog entryHere we have yet another recently discovered mineral added to our database. "Jinan Stone" was first collected in 2015 by Daisuke Nishio-Hamane of Tokyo University. It was referred to by this name prior to identification/classification as Jinan is the...
Blog entrySo goes the advertising strapline, and my reaction to seeing this photograph of gold bars, coins, nuggets and mineral ore/specimens. The haul of 30,000lbs, approx 1.5 tonnes was recovered from the wreck of the SS Central America from deep of off the...
Blog entrySome highlights from today's photography at TV Towers
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 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 entryOur visit to Bakewell Show for another year is sadly over; but what an eventful couple of days it has been. We arrived on the Friday night and after getting e-Rocks organised we headed off for the first meal out of the weekend. The Friday night "Curry...
Blog entryGeorge and I were on the road early today to visit the 2017 Sussex Mineral & Lapidary Society Show (SMLS) at Haywards Heath. This was the first time we have been to the show since 2010; e-Rocker Trevor Devon also Treasurer of the SMLS suggested we...
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 entryBelgian collector Jean Dehaye has recently been showing pictures of his recently collected specimen from Beez, Naumur, Belgium. A little over 2cm across comprising a hollow fossil cast with calcified internal ribs covered with micro honey coloured...
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 entryFriday 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...
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 entryComing up to completion in today's Cartils minerals auction this specimen of obsidian from Douglas, Idaho, USA was designated item number 220000 in our catalogue when uploaded. Our catalogue started back in January 2006, and has grown with some...
Blog entryAbove, a 1.58 gram nugget of gold, resembling a lizard-like creature, with adherent quartz matrix, Zwedru, Liberia. In the early 1980's a couple of good mates of mine were living in Monrovia, Liberia. While there, Linda & Simon visited an artisanal...
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 entryWe are having quite a golden time for new mineral species additions to e-Rocks. This short blog features news from from Jason Smith and Volker Betz regarding two new phosphate minerals from Foote Mine in North Carolina, USA. Apologies for the pun in the...
Blog entryBack 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...
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 entryAs we have passed Thanksgiving and now moving into the Christmas festive period, you might want to indulge yourself in a box of chocolates to go along with the celebrations? If so you might be interested in this listing from Norbert Stotzel starting...
Blog entryFake 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...
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 entryThe Shinkolobwe radium mine, 1922. The Belgian mining engineer above is sitting on a 7 ton boulder of pitchblende. An immense quantity of gamma-rays is irradiating his gonads. Safety equipment, a tie and a pith helmet. Unknowable to to the engineer,...
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 entryThe 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 - α-sulphur, or orthorhombic...
Blog entryAs 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...
Blog entryI 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...
Blog entryThose of you who read my last Oxford Show report will remember a mention of Paul Nicholson at Waveney Minerals. We have known Paul as a collector for well over 15 years, and more recently as an occasional show dealer in the UK. As of the last Show report...
Blog entryLiroconite 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...
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 entrySeveral months ago we could confirm tavagnascoite from the famous Bastnäs mines, well known for rich pink cerite specimens partially covered by haleniusite-La (first recognized by the e-rocks dealer nothernminerals) and also from the Sadisdorf region,...
Blog entryQuite often minerals appear online from places that one is never likely to visit, some places like Tsumeb or Trepca are well photographed and beautiful, some of course ugly. One place I have never visualised is the Tatra mountains spanning Poland and...
Blog entryDrakewalls House is an unassuming white painted Victorian house on the edge of Gunnislake, Cornwall. Here it is today currently being used as a guest house in the beautiful Tamar Valley; however to many mineral collectors this house will be remembered as...
Blog entryWe 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 distributed across this area famous...
Blog entryHoganite Hoganite and paceite (along with calclacite) are currently the only known minerals containing the organic acetate ion (CH3CHO2)- Minerals Containing the Acetate (Ethanoate) Ion Calclacite Ca(CH3COO)Cl · 5H2O Hoganite Cu(CH3COO)2 · H2O...
Blog entryAfter a short break we welcome back e-Rocks dealer – Jaroslaw Skupiewski, from Poland. Under the banner Geo-Trader Minerals Jaroslaw has been establishing himself as an European show dealer for the last 12 years, but he has also been busy online. His...
Blog entryYesterday for a change I was inputting some rocks, and saw the magic item number 650,000 approaching with around 30 rocks to go. As it happened the phone rang, and an hour later when I returned to saving the next item the counter had gone round to 650,...
Blog entryA lot earlier this morning George and his partner Sam became parents for the first time. Their little boy has been named Alexander Thomas Wrigley. There are two knock on effects, I have become a grandparent, and George is now currently covering his new...
Blog entryI recently came across a reference to gold being worked at Cross Gill in the North Pennines. It’s in an 1873 article - On the Occurrence of Lead, Zinc, and Iron Ores, in some Rocks of Carboniferous Age in the North-West of England, by De Rance. This 18...
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 entrySince we launched the new e-Rocks in September 2015 we have been busy behind the scenes working on small revisions and tweaks, plus of course doing all the other work in running the show. Today we have just upgraded the site to unleash a whole lot of new...
Blog entryThis week it was George's birthday but unfortunately work as usual in the TVM office. As it happened plans were afoot to make some homemade cupcakes and sing happy birthday. Not much chance of blowing the candle out though. All video evidence/sound...
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 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 entryAnother feature we have put in place for the new website is a table of most popular searches on the site within the last 7 days. A search counter increments each time during a session, a search term is entered. The table is displayed under "Searches" in...
Blog entryIntroduction: A few months ago I came across the mineral aldridegeite in the IMA list of minerals whilst doing some research. This sulphate mineral is a member of the develline group first discovered and only found at Broken Hill, New South Wales,...
Blog entryLast week I took a few days out to visit some favourite old haunts up in Weardale. I have always loved the place and the mining and mineral heritage have created an enduring strange feeling of home from home when ever I visit. The central purpose of my...
Blog entryHaving worked with Madagascan minerals over a number of years, grandidierite has always been a interesting and hard to get hold of mineral. The story went that there were a few localities close to each other in the south of Madagascar near Fort Dauphin;...
Blog entryAs 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...
Blog entryA little "smoke gets in your eyes" moment today as we said goodbye to Chris Mavris who has been helping us for the last 9 months. Behind the scenes at e-Rocks Chris has been diligently working away at some "special" projects for us which we will be...
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 entryNow veteran e-Rocks seller Ikram Muhammad of Pakistan Minerals celebrates his birthday today. Marking the occasion is the finale of his birthday auction, featuring this cracking specimen of beryl var vorobyevite from Afghanistan. Vorobyevite is a...
Blog entryAnalytical investigations of the germanite and renierite associated secondary minerals have lead to the discoveries of many unique minerals eg. otjisumeite, bartelkeite, stottite from the Tsumeb Mine, Otavi Highlands, Namibia in the past decades. There...
Blog entryGiuseppe Siccardi of Yourmineral Collection in Italy emailed me at the end of last month to tell me of some changes with his business. Giuseppe has been trading under Yourmineral collection (item code YMC) with e-Rocks since the end of 2007. Now 10 years...
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 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 entryAs we head towards Twelfth Night and the final demise of Christmas trees worldwide, we have got back to work with quite a bump. Over the last few days we have been finalising a very large software release and plan to get this deployed in the next week or...
Blog entryIt 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...
Blog entryLong 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...
Blog entryToday 30 December is the last day of auctions for e-Rocks in 2017, and quite a year it has been both on and off "the pitch". The Piatek Minerals auction closing at 23:40 tonight will be the final and 1839th auction during 2017; a year when we have...
Blog entryWhilst 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 minerals containing the decavanadate...
Blog entryLuigi 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, formula - Fe2+(SO3)·3H2O. The...
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 entryAlong with everything else that is going on we have been doing some background work on some phosphate minerals spurred on by a request by seller Modris Baum (LMB Minerals) and something he had discovered on a Brazilian hureaulite specimen. Modris has...
Blog entryHere I am back in the office on a wet and dull Monday morning after the 2018 Bakewell Show. Having spent a “full on” weekend in the bosom of the UK mineral collecting scene I am feeling a little bit tired. As usual George and I drove up to Bakewell from...
Blog entryThe 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...
Blog entrySaturday morning, September 2014, we were up bright and early and on the road to Fernleigh, Ontario. Unless you are a mineral collector, you likely will not have heard of the it. We were looking for a kyanite and staurolite occurrence. Actually, I was...
Blog entrySome interesting additions made to the e-Rocks catalogue from new seller Marco Frigerio of Classic Rocks and Gems, for both Iridium Chalk and Iridium Clay: these are examples of an iridium rich sediment found localised in unique layers in deposits...
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 entryDont forget as of 1st October 2017, the e-Rocks.com website will be transferring to ownership by e-Rocks Ltd. Please refer to our previous notice, linked below. Looking forward to our new jobs on Monday: as rock group the Who said back in 1971 in the...
Blog entryHelga Palmer and Gordon Fielder recently unearthed this copper token dated 1788 from the Parys Mountain Copper Mining Company at West Basset in Cornwall. By eighteenth century standards this little token had traveled a long way from home, but with a...
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 entryIt was in August last year that we reported the our page on Facebook had reached 8,000 likes, well now we have risen to the 10,000 mark. We continue to use our page to provide our Facebook followers a daily snapshot of the e-Rocks site new listings,...
Blog entryAndyrobertsite and calcioandyrobertsite are two fascinating mineral species present in a single very famous specimen from Tsumeb. This superb specimen was featured in the cover of the Mineralogical Record vol.30, num. 3, May-June 1999, jointly with the...
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 entryFor those who regularly use our Search feature to find minerals listed on e-Rocks, we have just launched a new feature to help get to the latest items. We have created a new filter in your relevant search results that will allow you to view any minerals...
Blog entryAs it is 31st December no auctions will be closing today on e-Rocks, however the holiday program continues tomorrow with the first auctions in 2016. Many thanks to all our customers, sellers and buyers for all your contributions and our success in 2015...
Blog entryCongratulations to Chris Spiromitros of Greekrocks - he has just updated/upgraded his website. He is also the first Dealer to put his e-Rocks auctions on his website using our Page App.
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 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 entryOut for a run last night and listening to the radio, in particular an excerpt about Greek mythology being discussed by Stephen Fry. Not my usual digest but it has been one of those weeks! Anyway the piece was about Dionysus the Ancient Greek god of wine...
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 entryEvery alpine collector's dream (and most other people too) is to find the perfect pocket. Austrian Strahler Peter Eberhard has been busy on the Alps at Habachtal. Earlier this month Peter was investigating a previously worked opening high up in the...
Blog entryOn our way home, we recently encountered an unusual - for mineral collectors - scenery: a snow-covered Saint Marie-aux-Mines! With these pictures Plinius Earth Treasures wishes all its e-rocks friends a Happy 2018 full of health, joy and new specimens....
Blog entryRecently 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, Italy, the specimen is part of...
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 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 entryI was in our archive TVM site researching something and chanced upon this blog entry from 13 years ago. Although not quite our first the content is quite interesting and certainly gives some insight into way back then, and how numbers have expanded...
Blog entryHere is another odd mineral featured in Armin Scholer's current auction. Kaiyuhite was first proposed as a new mineral back in the 1980s by young mining geologist Tony Dunn, who had noticed and collected this silver-grey metallic material whilst...
Blog entryA feature of the new website is the ability of our Database and your catalogue to hold and display items by Provenance. Behind the scenes we provide a whole inventory system that connects minerals to people, collectors, historic dealers and institutions...
Blog entryMarch Oxford show is the first of the 2016 series of Oxford shows. A small show but quite well attended this time was no different; it is a good opportunity to meet up with people after the winter months and Tucson. Personally suffering from "Manflu" I...