Written and posted mainly in response to "Proffesional Geologists Opinions of Mineral Collectors"", but the theme was already in draft, prompted by a few other recent threads.

It's not so much that mineral collecting per se is necessarily regarded as unprofessional, but there are several reasons why personal collecting is discouraged in a lot of professional circles, especially by the ""Offical" or "Company" policy with respect to collecting by those who are professionals themselves. (Some of this applies just as much to geologists collecting rocks as to mineralogists collcting minerals, if one cares to make that distinction!)

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Perhaps the most obvious factors are the potential for a conflict of interest, and the question of trust.

Here are is one example of a likely scenario: In the field, a professional geologist/private mineral collector is visiting a small quarry in geologically simple ground (say a granite quarry - one rock type, no unusual structural features, no minor intrusions, no commercially significant mineralisation, etc).

He's there just to collect a few typical rock samples of the locality for a regional geological survey. He should be able to be in and out of that quarry in an hour to collect his "official" representative granite specimens. But he spends the whole afternoon there, because there has been some recent blasting, exposing a nice fresh vein with vugs containing euhedral crystals. Now if that was a new find of rare minerals, it might be of real scientific interest, or perhaps there are unusually spectacular crystals which he is collecting to offer to a museum or a university geology department, so it's justifiable to spend more time collecting than originally planned. But if it's simply yet more typical material of the same common minerals which are already well-known from that spot (quartz, feldspar, apatite, etc), and he is just collecting for his own interest, simply to get a better specimen for his window sill in his office or at home, with absolutely no benefit being gained either for his employer, the museum, the quarry company, an educational establishment, or science in general, then obviously that would be regarded as unprofessional.

Another example is where a professional who is known to have a personal collection is seeking employment in a situation where he would have custody of, or easy access to, a collection of valuable specimens (e.g. a university staff member, survey geologist, museum curator etc). It is obviously going to be of concern to the potential employer that he might be unable to resist the temptation to take the occasional specimen for his own collection, even if it's only from the "duplicates for exchange, testing, and donation" material, and not from the primary collection of curated specimens.

It may be quite acceptable to allow oneself to collect a few extra personal duplicate pieces when there is the time and opportunity in a quarry, or during a time-out on a long expedition, when you may otherwise be working 24/7. Or one may be lucky enough to be in the right place when the curator of a museum has a clear out of excess duplicate material (I know, I've been there! e.g. see my note on a franklinite specimen, below), but in the above situations there can be very "grey areas", and it can be difficult for some to be sure of staying on the right side of the line between integrity and dishonesty, and it's very easy for others to be tempted into deliberate and persistent wasting of an employer's time, or even downright theft of unique or valuable specimens. Many employers are not prepared to take that chance.

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Besides the question of conflict of interest by professionals who are also collectors, with regard to the professional's attitude to the collector, part of the problem is the "unknown quantity/quality" of amateur collectors. The latter category obviously includes a wide range of people, from those who simply collect a few pretty pebbles or crystals for decorative purposes, and for whom the origin is completely irrlevant (no problem, and long may they enjoy their specimens), to those who may be experieced mineralogists, maybe even scientifically qualified professionals, but in an unrelated field (e.g. one of the most knowledgeable "amateur" collectors I ever knew was an electronics engineer, whose interest in mineralogy began when he developed a method for growing synthetic quartz crystals, during his involvement in the invention of radar during WW2!). Also amongst the "amateur collectors" are of course, those like myself who are now retired after a career as professional mineralogists.

One of the categories of amateur collectors who give rise to the most concern among professional scientists are those (perhaps a minority to be sure, but nevertheless a significant one with respect to this topic) who whilst apparently being "serious collectors", with a catlogued and labelled specimen collection, have no scientific training, and who seem unable to comprehend how unscientific some aspects of their approach to their specimen collecting are.

This is probably best exemplified with respect to their attitude to the matter of accurate, traceable specimen provenance.

For example, there seem to be some who are quite happy to suggest a likely locality for a specimen of unknown provenance, sometimes on the most tenuous of evidence - maybe simply the appearance in a photograph of a specimen of a common mineral which could have come from any of several localities. It may look like material which is very familiar to them, and the assumption is made that as it looks like specimens of that mineral from locality "X", then that must be where it is from. If, as an amateur collector, one is only interested in a specimen for its aesthetic appeal, a well-informed guess as to its source [b]may[/b] be acceptable up to a point, for a trivial specimen, and it's probably an innoccuous matter for a piece of massive fluorite, a detached quartz crystal or a piece of polished agate, but in principle it's unscientific practice. There seem to be many amateur collectors (and quite a few dealers) who are either unaware of, or prepared to disregard, the scientific aspect of the hobby which demands that a correct provenance for a specimen is absolutely essential for it to have any significant scientific interest. Genuinely serious mineral collectors (i.e. true amateur scientists, as opposed to collectors interested solely in aesthetic display pieces) or astute investors, as well as professional scientists, will require scientifically accurate, reliable locality data for any specimen to be of real interest.

I have a number of specimens from "unknown" localities, which could have come from a number of sources, and are worth keeping, either for aesthetic reasons, or as test material, but are labelled "Locality unknown", even though I can guess with reasonably high confidence where some of them are from. The latter category even includes some specimens I collected myself, but for which the history is not traceable, because I collected them many years ago, long before I started a systematic catalogue and labelling of my collection, and thought at the time that I'd always remember where I collected something ([b]BIG[/b] mistake).

I also have a few pieces of which I can be reasonably sure of the provenance, at least to district level, if not the actual mine, simply because they are so distinctive, but I still label them with a caveat. e.g. I have a large lump of massive franklinite with zincite, which is in my collection because I was asked to identify the specimen after was found (unlabelled) in a dusty drawer in the London Geological Museum, during the clearance of an old laboratory. Even though I confirmed the suspected phase identities by XRD, and did major element analysis by EDS, and everyone who saw it agreed that it is typical material of the highly probable locality, the curator decided to discard it, and not catalogue it in the Museum collection because it's history could not be traced, and offered it to me. My label and database entries for the locality are "Probably Franklin NJ", although I have pondered whether I should leave the locality line on the label blank, in case some later owner discards my handwritten label, and drops the "probably" from his new clean printed card.

The fact that unscientific attribution of localities is known to happen commonly, and that some collectors are unconcerned about this, even for specimens of quite rare species, is one of the primary reasons for that unwelcome communication gap and stand-off that frequently exists between the communities of professional and amateur scientists. This applies particularly in those fields where accurate locality information is vital to the investigation of specimens, and the interpretation of their significance, such as mineralogy, palaeontology, archaeology, etc. (As has been noted in the thread referred to at the start of this blog, this is not suuch a critical factor for those more observational sciences such as astronomy, ornithology, or meteorology and those are correspondingly more welcoming of the amateur's contributions.) The more often that guessing (however well-informed and helpfully intended), is used to suggest locality descriptions for specimens of unknown provenance, the more suspicious scientists become of specimens collected by non-professionals, and the less scientifically valuable any specimens from secondary sources become, and so also the wider the professional/amateur gap in the specimen-based sciences becomes.

I always avoid attributing localities to specimens of unknown provenance simply on the basis of appearance alone, and am wary even when there is corroborative evidence such as a highly characteristic paragenesis, texture, or chemical analysis, even for an apparently obvious "single-locality" specimen - we all know that a piece of finely fibrous purple charoite with clusters of prisms of orange tinaksite can only be from the Murunskyi Massif locality in Yakutia, don't we? - but there's always the chance, however remote, that you may be holding a piece from an as-yet unreported second occurence. It's a slippery slope, and it's rather too easy for a specimen to end up misleadingly labelled on the basis of what started out as no more than an informed guess.

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A hypothetical scenario:

A mineral collector lives in eastern Canada. He has bought a large piece of unlablelled charoite, because although it is rather a scruffy, weathered specimen, being sold as lapidary material rather than a mineral collectors piece, it looks like it contains some rather nice patches of tinaksite crystals, and he knows such material only occurs in one place. When he gets it home, he splits it open, and is very pleased to find that inside it is some of the finest tinaksite he has ever seen. He writes a label on the basis of his and and a correspondent's reasonable assessment of it's likely source. (Something like "Tinaksite in charoite; [Probably from Russia - ref. correspondence with J D Dana et al @ Mindat]"), and that's fine if that label stays with the piece, and no further assumptions are made. However, a subsequent owner drops the "probably from" on a newly written label, and doesn't keep the old label with the specimen.

Many years later a paper is published describing a new occurence of tinaksite & charoite in northern Greenland, at a previously unseen locality, recently uncovered by the retreat of a glacier. The paragenesis and texture is remarkably similar to that of the Russian charoite, except that the charoite is comparatively mediocre, whilst the tinaksite is spectacular. A subsequent owner of the specimen (which has by now lost its second label) is told by a friend, who is curator at a local museum, and who has just read the report of the Greenland charoite, with photos showing material which looks just like the original Canadian collector's piece, that he has never seen such material from the type locality, and thinks the material is "More likely to be from the Kangaroodliac gneiss locality in NW Greenland than from Russia". The current owner takes his word for that and labels the specimen accordingly, so it ends up with an apparently authoritative, precise locality description, but with a completely inaccurate attribution.

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I know that seems to be long chain of "mights", "ifs" & "possiblies", but that sort of process is is not fanciful, or rare. In fact it's all too common, and in the case of a specimen of some rare mineral, or an unusual paragenesis, superficially similar to material from a classic locality, it becomes a very easy trap to fall into, and can lead to much time being wasted in work on inaccurately labelled material. When anyone acquires a specimen not collected personally, whether by purchase, exchange, or gift, they only have the information given with that specimen. The record of a specimen's original source locality is the single most vital piece of information about it. That is essentially irreplaceable; anything else in the way of identity, composition, crystallography etc, can be determined later.

The perception of an unscientific approach amongst amateur collectors is amongst the main reasons why some professionals even go to the extent of getting legislation enacted to prevent uncontrolled collecting in classic areas. Part of the justification is supposedly that scientifically valuable specimens, perhaps containing unique parageneses or even new species, may be taken into private collections and simply lie there unidentified, or end up simply as unlabelled decorative pieces, and be lost to science. (It is a grand irony that there is one well-known example where such legislation has been driven by one who is himself in the position of having an apparent professional/collector conflict of interest at the highest possible level!)

What all this means of course is that ultimately, the only way to be certain that a specimen is scientifically useful is to ensure that it has a fully documented history, traceable right back to it's original source. So keep all labels with secondary specimens (including old torn and faded ones - somone may recognise the source one day), and cross reference catalogued specimens you collected yourself to your field notes, and your collection may one day be considered scientifically valuable.

Any break in that history, and it's not much more than an ornament.

Pete N.

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