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During the last week in February we made contact with Nottinghamshire based collector Alan Peckover; he was looking for a buyer for his collection of minerals.
After some discussion and a visit to see the collection a sale was agreed, and pick up date...
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Hot off the press, well not quite, it is time to update your labels and collection databases, the mineral eztite has been redefined; actually to quite a different structure to the original determination.
Redefined by IMA in 2018 (proposal 18-A) the new...
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Here we are back in Bakewell for the 15th consecutive year.
By comparison with others a short innings but one of the constants throughout the life and times of TVM.
George and I celebrated with a Chinese meal in the restaurant that used to be an Indian...
-
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...
-
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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In November 1777 French botanist Joseph Dombey, above, set sail for Peru and Chile, as part of the joint Spanish-French Ruiz & Pavón Expedition. The arduous eleven year botanical exploration provided a wealth of plant specimens, an international...
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We just put this specimen of realgar and quartz out onto the website for an upcoming auction.
Recovered in circa 2000 just before the "big find" of realgar at Baia Sprie, this specimen displays wonderful contrast between the white and greys of the...
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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...
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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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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...
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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...
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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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Greenockite from Tsumeb forms beautiful hexagonal orange crystals in cavities of Cd rich galena. Often the specimens host brownish Cd rich smithsonite. Crystal size is usually around 50-100µm.
Studies under the electron beam reveal the details of the...
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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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This old time specimen from Baia Sprie, Romania is quite rare and unusual.
It comprises myriad sheaves of clear baryte arranged in fern-like stacks. Within the body of the individual crystals there are vivid red inclusions of realgar, and forming a...
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Former e-Rocks seller and gemstone dealer from downunder, Klaus Brucksch has just been showing off some grizzly remains trapped in amber.
These amber specimens come from Myanmar and the creatures are a bit different to the flies ants and other insects we...
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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...
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El Teniente mine is reportedly the largest underground copper mine in the world with some 3000km of tunnels and 1500km.
The mine started in the the 1820s and named from Braden mine from 1904 until it was changed to El Teniente mine in 1973.
The link...
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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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It is already nearly a few months since we returned from our eventful trip to Alicante with the Uerpmann collection; when we returned we parked a large portion of the unseen collection in our warehouse.
All this material had been wrapped and taped in...
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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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Here is a little spotlight on this rare pink manganese beryllium phosphate mineral.
First discovered at Viitaniemi Pegmatite in Finland and still hard to spell, this brightly coloured mineral produces fine crystallised specimens from Pakistan, (and...
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Here is an interesting ovoid form embedded in obisidian from Coso Range, Inyo County, California.
But what is inside?
Answer - cristobalite tridymite & fayalite (brown crystals)
Happy Easter
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It hardly seems a week since Bakewell show last Saturday, where does the time go!
We had a great time and despite the intention of not picking up too much stuff, it would be rude not to take part in the now ritual hunt for interesting and unusual things...
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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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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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A Sunday lay-in follows the early Saturday start at Bakewell. The show does not open until 9am. This allows the dealers to get back or recover from various excesses of the previous night.
Last night in addition to the Dealers' dinner there were at least...
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The other day we picked out a specimen from the Ted Smithson collection, namely a witherite labelled as from the Joycey Shaft at Langley Barony Mine near Haydon Bridge, Northumberland, UK.
It is the first time we have seen anything from this locality so...
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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....
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George and I have just picked up the collection of Dr Ernst Peter Uerpmann from deepest Spain.
The collection of over 3,000 pieces has been in storage since 2002 when Peter moved from Germany to Alicante on his retirement; there are several interesting...
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We already recently reported on the number of new minerals being added to e-Rocks in October, an impressive average of 161 items per day went up in the last 2 months.
We thought it might interesting to share some of the other e-Rocks facts and figures...
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Our man of action George (and partner Sam) have had a busy few months getting themselves organised for a house move.
Today finally it is the big day and everything is set to move into the new place.
Of course we are all happy; with new house comes a...
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1730: The first prospectors in the the Franklin Mining District, Dutch miners from the Hudson Valley, unfortunately called the area "the copper tract." Although copper minerals do occur in the orebody - 38 of them, including a rare copper hydroxyl...
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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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Two more mineral firsts are on show on e-Rocks at the moment.
Our first specimen of fuettererite is due to close on Joy Desor's auction this evening.
Fuettererite
Originally described back in 2002 from the type locality at NE2 Vein, Otto Mountain,...
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e-Rocks seller and well traveled field collector Tasos Tsinidis from Greece, has some wonderful minerals and stories to tell about his exploits.
He is knowledge of all things mineralogical and Greek is immense, he also is excellent at preparing and...
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At the beginning of last week I posted the above picture of Realgar and Native Arsenic on my Facebook page with the caption "Toxic red stuff for Monday".
Beautiful red crystals of realgar against a black and white background do look great in detail.
My...
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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...
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You may have noticed today's home page centre has changed; usually we display "today's auctions closing", but today we are showing "all auctions". There is a simple reason for this.
Because of demand from our sellers, we have had to increase our schedule...
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Bernissart Show is an annual event in Hainaut region of Belgium.
The 28th show was held this weekend (29-30 August)
Here are some photos of the show and a link to the original write up posted by Belgian collector Max Tom on his excellent blog site (in...
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This fine red vanadinite TN didn't make the buyer's cut in last night's auction and remained unsold.
Look out for it in our next TVM Mixed auction later in April for a second chance - it will be reduced to $5 start...
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A few days ago an anonymous user from Germany made e-Rocks history by being the 10,000th registered user to sign up to our site.
As ever, we would like to thank "anonymous" and all our growing ranks of visitors both old and new for checking in and making...
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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....
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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,...
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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...
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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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I was asking Colleen Thomson about the latest from the Greenlaws project at the last Oxford show - she did say that an announcement was imminent and here it is, courtesy of Peter Ward on their Facebook page.
"Hi everyone...
We are delighted to announce...
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How the days and months seem to fly by, and now summer has passed we are into the autumn season of mineral shows. We start our outings as usual by visiting Bakewell show next week end.
Arguably Bakewell (Rock Exchange) is the UK's largest show for...
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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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Hi everybody! Next December 16, 17 and 18 there will be celebrate MinerELX MineralShow in Elche (Alicante) Spain.
We have opened a Mineral Photo Contest and we would like to invite you to participate.
Mineral Contest with 3 categoies:
- Alicante mineral...
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Reiner and I retired to Cobalt, Ontario, Canada a little over a year ago. When we aren't out exploring the old mine sites in and around the area, we devote our time in support of the Cobalt Historical Society.
The group maintains the Heritage Silver...
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Peshawar based Imran Bangash of Spin Ghar Minerals has just returned from an exciting trip to the mining locality at Marki Khel in Khogyani, Afghanistan.
The locality is well reknowned for its wonderful specimens of andradite, epidote, diopside, and...
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e-Rocks now has real time bidding and status updates; these change and prompt you automatically without refreshing your browser etc
In addition to this we have just added our network manager to support this real time information to your device.
Your...
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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...
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Weishanite is a very rare gold-silver amalgam, which had two localities. Recent investigations of a unknown metallic hexagonal phase on an old sample hosting verified magnolite showed that this is Weishanite in beautiful hexagonal crystals.
I have not...
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Yesterday our friend Aamir Shah came calling as he has been doing since 2007.
We first met Aamir in the car park at Bakewell Show in October 2006 and ever since he has been a regular visitor to TV Towers 3 or 4 times a year.
Aamir spends 2-3 months in...
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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...
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The other day I was checking through some minerals from last year's fluorite find at Shannapheasteen in the Irish Republic.
Within the base of some quartz crystals were some small 2mm clear to white flat crystals. These were isolated and well dispersed...
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Cornish Explorers on Facebook usually carries a series of really interesting mining and exploration photographs for Cornish localities.
One of the members, Keith Russ has just got himself a Gro Pro and a lifting drone.
Fantastic toy and some fantastic...
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Life at TVM isn't all about swaning off to shows, buying minerals or photographing/describing things for our weekly lists.
All this activity leads to one thing: an untidy stock room. Usually we can survive for a few months before needing to tidy up. For...
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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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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...
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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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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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In the current YourSystemmaticCollection (YSC) auction closing tonight, as well as the usual range of rare minerals there is another mineral first seen here on e-Rocks.
George was talking with Roberto Bracco of YSC at Munich and told us to look out for...
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The Birmingham Auction house Fellows recently conducted an auction of some 257 lots of worked Blue John.
The group photo must almost be without precedent!
The catalogue contained just about every type of object that has ever been fashioned from Blue John...
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Coldberry Gutter is a prominent scar in the hills high above the Weardale and Teesdale valleys at the head of Bow Lee and Hudeshope valleys, within County Durham, UK.
Location of Coldberry Gutter
All across this area there are a number of "hushes...
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2 weeks to go until this year's Rock Exchange - AKA Bakewell Show.
Always great to attend for 2 show days of minerals and catch-up with people from all over the UK and further afield.
10th and 11th October, 2015
Lady Manners School,
Bakewell,...
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Some years ago, around 2010 news started to trickle out about spectacular finds of collectable mineral specimens in Inner Mongolia. The first deposits brought back memories of Dal'negorsk as the geology and minerals like Ilvaite showed similarities....
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A small flake of Californian gold from Coloma, the location of Marshall's '48 discovery.
Sutter's Mill was a sawmill, owned by 19th-century pioneer John Sutter, where west-coast gold was first found in significant quantities, setting off the California...
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Searching for radioactive minerals is a piece of cake compared to metal detecting. If you get a signal, you’ve got a target. None of this business of uncovering nails or shotgun casings, or the end of your steel-toed boot.
Still, using a mid-century...
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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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George uncovered this photogenic little millerite specimen last week and the picture caused quite a stir on Facebook over the weekend.
Labelled as being from the Windsor Colliery, Abertridwr near Caerphilly, Wales it displays a very pretty array of...
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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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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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In the world of minerals different localities can often be distinguished by variations in morphology and or associations; for example it is comparatively easy to determine that a dioptase specimen was collected in Tsumeb over say Kaokoveld or Altyn.
I...
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As they say "you live and learn" and in the interest of mineralogy this is nearly a daily experience.
The photograph above shows some little grain-like crystals of native sulphur set on scorodite from Hemerdon Bal in Devon, UK. I have never seen these...
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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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Congratulations to long standing customer of e-Rocks, Andy Christy for the naming of new mineral "andychristyite" after his good self.
Andy joins an ever growing list of sellers, customers and visitors to our site to which this honour has been bestowed....
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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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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...
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The Mineralogical Record have recently published their latest periodical online article "What is new on the Mineral World?".
These articles, written by Tom Moore look around and review internet dealers website and feature minerals currently on view.
This...
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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....
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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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George flagged a mineral listing to me last night, an example of kämmererite from Mont Haïto in Togo.
Very rarely do we have to add a new country to our geographical database, but until now we had seen nothing listed from this smaller country in Africa....
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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...
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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...
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Nearly 3 years ago now, we checked out and invested in "spin" technology for capturing 360 degree presentation of minerals.
The concept is simple, you set your mineral centre on a turntable and then control the movement of the turntable with your camera...
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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...
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The new e-Rocks has an archive of approximately 180,000 specimens accrued over 9 years of listing.
We have now made these available to registered users of our site with further mineral and location details tied in.
Here is a rather good specimen of...
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This Sunday is the Paul Lowe Memorial Oxford Show.
I am sure it will be a great show and a good opportunity to remember Paul with fellow mineral people.
These are the details;
Venue: Exeter Hall, Kidlington, North Oxford, OX5 1AB
Sunday 27th November...
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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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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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Sapphire - September's Birthstone
Sapphire - Zazafotsy, Ihosy, Madagascar - 16mm, sold in September 2018
We have not written a "numbers" blog for nearly a year; we figure most people are here for the minerals but sometimes it might help to find out...
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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...
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I was visiting an e-Rocks customer the other day, and was awestruck by his collection of radio-active artefacts.
Many things have changed over the years as learning and science have made our lives safer, but looking back some of these are just incredible...
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If you don't already know about it, here is a website for anyone who is interested in old mining history, especially related to the western states of the USA.
The website contains a huge and comprehensive database of mining localities, mining information...
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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
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When I started examining micro minerals I came across a nice specimen hosting olive green bartelkeite. It was pure luck to find this mineral. This is what I can say now looking back at the small number of specimens I had.
This makes the species to one...
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Until I researched it I would never have thought vanadinite likely to occur at Ilfeld in Harz, Germany.
The specimen we discovered is a manganite matrix with tiny pockets of braunite, and with one solitary yellow (part) crystal within.
Being solitary and...
Blog entryDuring the last week in February we made contact with Nottinghamshire based collector Alan Peckover; he was looking for a buyer for his collection of minerals. After some discussion and a visit to see the collection a sale was agreed, and pick up date...
Blog entryHot off the press, well not quite, it is time to update your labels and collection databases, the mineral eztite has been redefined; actually to quite a different structure to the original determination. Redefined by IMA in 2018 (proposal 18-A) the new...
Blog entryHere we are back in Bakewell for the 15th consecutive year. By comparison with others a short innings but one of the constants throughout the life and times of TVM. George and I celebrated with a Chinese meal in the restaurant that used to be an Indian...
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 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 entryIn November 1777 French botanist Joseph Dombey, above, set sail for Peru and Chile, as part of the joint Spanish-French Ruiz & Pavón Expedition. The arduous eleven year botanical exploration provided a wealth of plant specimens, an international...
Blog entryWe just put this specimen of realgar and quartz out onto the website for an upcoming auction. Recovered in circa 2000 just before the "big find" of realgar at Baia Sprie, this specimen displays wonderful contrast between the white and greys of the...
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 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 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 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 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 entryGreenockite from Tsumeb forms beautiful hexagonal orange crystals in cavities of Cd rich galena. Often the specimens host brownish Cd rich smithsonite. Crystal size is usually around 50-100µm. Studies under the electron beam reveal the details of the...
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 entryThis old time specimen from Baia Sprie, Romania is quite rare and unusual. It comprises myriad sheaves of clear baryte arranged in fern-like stacks. Within the body of the individual crystals there are vivid red inclusions of realgar, and forming a...
Blog entryFormer e-Rocks seller and gemstone dealer from downunder, Klaus Brucksch has just been showing off some grizzly remains trapped in amber. These amber specimens come from Myanmar and the creatures are a bit different to the flies ants and other insects we...
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 entryEl Teniente mine is reportedly the largest underground copper mine in the world with some 3000km of tunnels and 1500km. The mine started in the the 1820s and named from Braden mine from 1904 until it was changed to El Teniente mine in 1973. The link...
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 entryIt is already nearly a few months since we returned from our eventful trip to Alicante with the Uerpmann collection; when we returned we parked a large portion of the unseen collection in our warehouse. All this material had been wrapped and taped in...
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 entryHere is a little spotlight on this rare pink manganese beryllium phosphate mineral. First discovered at Viitaniemi Pegmatite in Finland and still hard to spell, this brightly coloured mineral produces fine crystallised specimens from Pakistan, (and...
Blog entryHere is an interesting ovoid form embedded in obisidian from Coso Range, Inyo County, California. But what is inside? Answer - cristobalite tridymite & fayalite (brown crystals) Happy Easter
Blog entryIt hardly seems a week since Bakewell show last Saturday, where does the time go! We had a great time and despite the intention of not picking up too much stuff, it would be rude not to take part in the now ritual hunt for interesting and unusual things...
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 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 entryA Sunday lay-in follows the early Saturday start at Bakewell. The show does not open until 9am. This allows the dealers to get back or recover from various excesses of the previous night. Last night in addition to the Dealers' dinner there were at least...
Blog entryThe other day we picked out a specimen from the Ted Smithson collection, namely a witherite labelled as from the Joycey Shaft at Langley Barony Mine near Haydon Bridge, Northumberland, UK. It is the first time we have seen anything from this locality so...
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 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 entryWe already recently reported on the number of new minerals being added to e-Rocks in October, an impressive average of 161 items per day went up in the last 2 months. We thought it might interesting to share some of the other e-Rocks facts and figures...
Blog entryOur man of action George (and partner Sam) have had a busy few months getting themselves organised for a house move. Today finally it is the big day and everything is set to move into the new place. Of course we are all happy; with new house comes a...
Blog entry1730: The first prospectors in the the Franklin Mining District, Dutch miners from the Hudson Valley, unfortunately called the area "the copper tract." Although copper minerals do occur in the orebody - 38 of them, including a rare copper hydroxyl...
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 entryTwo more mineral firsts are on show on e-Rocks at the moment. Our first specimen of fuettererite is due to close on Joy Desor's auction this evening. Fuettererite Originally described back in 2002 from the type locality at NE2 Vein, Otto Mountain,...
Blog entrye-Rocks seller and well traveled field collector Tasos Tsinidis from Greece, has some wonderful minerals and stories to tell about his exploits. He is knowledge of all things mineralogical and Greek is immense, he also is excellent at preparing and...
Blog entryAt the beginning of last week I posted the above picture of Realgar and Native Arsenic on my Facebook page with the caption "Toxic red stuff for Monday". Beautiful red crystals of realgar against a black and white background do look great in detail. My...
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 entryYou may have noticed today's home page centre has changed; usually we display "today's auctions closing", but today we are showing "all auctions". There is a simple reason for this. Because of demand from our sellers, we have had to increase our schedule...
Blog entryBernissart Show is an annual event in Hainaut region of Belgium. The 28th show was held this weekend (29-30 August) Here are some photos of the show and a link to the original write up posted by Belgian collector Max Tom on his excellent blog site (in...
Blog entryThis fine red vanadinite TN didn't make the buyer's cut in last night's auction and remained unsold. Look out for it in our next TVM Mixed auction later in April for a second chance - it will be reduced to $5 start...
Blog entryA few days ago an anonymous user from Germany made e-Rocks history by being the 10,000th registered user to sign up to our site. As ever, we would like to thank "anonymous" and all our growing ranks of visitors both old and new for checking in and making...
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 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 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 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 entryI was asking Colleen Thomson about the latest from the Greenlaws project at the last Oxford show - she did say that an announcement was imminent and here it is, courtesy of Peter Ward on their Facebook page. "Hi everyone... We are delighted to announce...
Blog entryHow the days and months seem to fly by, and now summer has passed we are into the autumn season of mineral shows. We start our outings as usual by visiting Bakewell show next week end. Arguably Bakewell (Rock Exchange) is the UK's largest show for...
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 entryHi everybody! Next December 16, 17 and 18 there will be celebrate MinerELX MineralShow in Elche (Alicante) Spain. We have opened a Mineral Photo Contest and we would like to invite you to participate. Mineral Contest with 3 categoies: - Alicante mineral...
Blog entryReiner and I retired to Cobalt, Ontario, Canada a little over a year ago. When we aren't out exploring the old mine sites in and around the area, we devote our time in support of the Cobalt Historical Society. The group maintains the Heritage Silver...
Blog entryPeshawar based Imran Bangash of Spin Ghar Minerals has just returned from an exciting trip to the mining locality at Marki Khel in Khogyani, Afghanistan. The locality is well reknowned for its wonderful specimens of andradite, epidote, diopside, and...
Blog entrye-Rocks now has real time bidding and status updates; these change and prompt you automatically without refreshing your browser etc In addition to this we have just added our network manager to support this real time information to your device. Your...
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 entryWeishanite is a very rare gold-silver amalgam, which had two localities. Recent investigations of a unknown metallic hexagonal phase on an old sample hosting verified magnolite showed that this is Weishanite in beautiful hexagonal crystals. I have not...
Blog entryYesterday our friend Aamir Shah came calling as he has been doing since 2007. We first met Aamir in the car park at Bakewell Show in October 2006 and ever since he has been a regular visitor to TV Towers 3 or 4 times a year. Aamir spends 2-3 months in...
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 entryThe other day I was checking through some minerals from last year's fluorite find at Shannapheasteen in the Irish Republic. Within the base of some quartz crystals were some small 2mm clear to white flat crystals. These were isolated and well dispersed...
Blog entryCornish Explorers on Facebook usually carries a series of really interesting mining and exploration photographs for Cornish localities. One of the members, Keith Russ has just got himself a Gro Pro and a lifting drone. Fantastic toy and some fantastic...
Blog entryLife at TVM isn't all about swaning off to shows, buying minerals or photographing/describing things for our weekly lists. All this activity leads to one thing: an untidy stock room. Usually we can survive for a few months before needing to tidy up. For...
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 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 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 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 entryIn the current YourSystemmaticCollection (YSC) auction closing tonight, as well as the usual range of rare minerals there is another mineral first seen here on e-Rocks. George was talking with Roberto Bracco of YSC at Munich and told us to look out for...
Blog entryThe Birmingham Auction house Fellows recently conducted an auction of some 257 lots of worked Blue John. The group photo must almost be without precedent! The catalogue contained just about every type of object that has ever been fashioned from Blue John...
Blog entryColdberry Gutter is a prominent scar in the hills high above the Weardale and Teesdale valleys at the head of Bow Lee and Hudeshope valleys, within County Durham, UK. Location of Coldberry Gutter All across this area there are a number of "hushes...
Blog entry2 weeks to go until this year's Rock Exchange - AKA Bakewell Show. Always great to attend for 2 show days of minerals and catch-up with people from all over the UK and further afield. 10th and 11th October, 2015 Lady Manners School, Bakewell,...
Blog entrySome years ago, around 2010 news started to trickle out about spectacular finds of collectable mineral specimens in Inner Mongolia. The first deposits brought back memories of Dal'negorsk as the geology and minerals like Ilvaite showed similarities....
Blog entryA small flake of Californian gold from Coloma, the location of Marshall's '48 discovery. Sutter's Mill was a sawmill, owned by 19th-century pioneer John Sutter, where west-coast gold was first found in significant quantities, setting off the California...
Blog entrySearching for radioactive minerals is a piece of cake compared to metal detecting. If you get a signal, you’ve got a target. None of this business of uncovering nails or shotgun casings, or the end of your steel-toed boot. Still, using a mid-century...
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 entryGeorge uncovered this photogenic little millerite specimen last week and the picture caused quite a stir on Facebook over the weekend. Labelled as being from the Windsor Colliery, Abertridwr near Caerphilly, Wales it displays a very pretty array of...
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 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 entryIn the world of minerals different localities can often be distinguished by variations in morphology and or associations; for example it is comparatively easy to determine that a dioptase specimen was collected in Tsumeb over say Kaokoveld or Altyn. I...
Blog entryAs they say "you live and learn" and in the interest of mineralogy this is nearly a daily experience. The photograph above shows some little grain-like crystals of native sulphur set on scorodite from Hemerdon Bal in Devon, UK. I have never seen these...
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 entryCongratulations to long standing customer of e-Rocks, Andy Christy for the naming of new mineral "andychristyite" after his good self. Andy joins an ever growing list of sellers, customers and visitors to our site to which this honour has been bestowed....
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 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 entryThe Mineralogical Record have recently published their latest periodical online article "What is new on the Mineral World?". These articles, written by Tom Moore look around and review internet dealers website and feature minerals currently on view. This...
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 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 entryGeorge flagged a mineral listing to me last night, an example of kämmererite from Mont Haïto in Togo. Very rarely do we have to add a new country to our geographical database, but until now we had seen nothing listed from this smaller country in Africa....
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 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 entryNearly 3 years ago now, we checked out and invested in "spin" technology for capturing 360 degree presentation of minerals. The concept is simple, you set your mineral centre on a turntable and then control the movement of the turntable with your camera...
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 entryThe new e-Rocks has an archive of approximately 180,000 specimens accrued over 9 years of listing. We have now made these available to registered users of our site with further mineral and location details tied in. Here is a rather good specimen of...
Blog entryThis Sunday is the Paul Lowe Memorial Oxford Show. I am sure it will be a great show and a good opportunity to remember Paul with fellow mineral people. These are the details; Venue: Exeter Hall, Kidlington, North Oxford, OX5 1AB Sunday 27th November...
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 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 entrySapphire - September's Birthstone Sapphire - Zazafotsy, Ihosy, Madagascar - 16mm, sold in September 2018 We have not written a "numbers" blog for nearly a year; we figure most people are here for the minerals but sometimes it might help to find out...
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 entryI was visiting an e-Rocks customer the other day, and was awestruck by his collection of radio-active artefacts. Many things have changed over the years as learning and science have made our lives safer, but looking back some of these are just incredible...
Blog entryIf you don't already know about it, here is a website for anyone who is interested in old mining history, especially related to the western states of the USA. The website contains a huge and comprehensive database of mining localities, mining information...
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 entryWhen I started examining micro minerals I came across a nice specimen hosting olive green bartelkeite. It was pure luck to find this mineral. This is what I can say now looking back at the small number of specimens I had. This makes the species to one...
Blog entryUntil I researched it I would never have thought vanadinite likely to occur at Ilfeld in Harz, Germany. The specimen we discovered is a manganite matrix with tiny pockets of braunite, and with one solitary yellow (part) crystal within. Being solitary and...