Favorite Self-Collected Specimens

This has been called for a few times in recent threads so might as well get the ball rolling. I would like to adopt Gail's one post/picture per day rule for this thread, but more than one view of a specimen should be OK.

I'll start out with a 1.5 x 4 cm. amethyst scepter collected in 2004 from Crystal Park, Montana, USA since it's one of the few specimens I've taken a somewhat acceptable picture of.

I'll go second! >:D<

This datolite was collected at the Quincy Mine in Upper Michigan. The specimen measures 9 cm across and shows the yellow/orange colour that is highly sought after by collectors. There is also some spots of native copper on the face as well.

Good thread topic, Jim. One of my all time favorites: a 9mm Kainosite -Y from Hickory, NC. I like the kainosite, but also the sharp hexagonal muscovites with it. The mica in that find was incredible.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2011 04:22AM by Keith Wood.

This vesuvianite is from the Eg location that yielded several good specimens in the early 19th century. Vesuvianite from here are well represented in European museums. The original location was lost, but vesuvianite was rediscovered in the 1960-ties. The pictured specimen was the first good crystal I was able to retrieve from the location back in 2001. It has since then been one of my favourites.




Olav

I collected this 1-mm doubly-terminated wurtzite in 1988 along with Pete Richards at the railroad cut in Donohoe, Pennsylvania. The wurtzites occur in
calcite seams in ironstone concretions. It didn't take very long to fill a bucket with concretions. It took longer than expected to carry them to the car! It took
all winter to break open the concretions and carefully dissolve the calcite to find the wurtzite crystals.

Hi

Here is one of my exciting ones - maybe not really great but really exciting

Tomek

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"Spirifer" Geological Society



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2011 01:10PM by Tomasz Praszkier.

I've posted the head photo of this specimen elsewhere on Mindat, but thought I'd show the UV response here - this piece is the first fluorite I collected - and as I recall, the day was WRETCHED! Driving rain, cold winds - November at it's worst. Click on the photo for details of this fluorite from Flamboro.

A small, gemmy smoky quartz crystal, doubly-terminated, on blue cleavelandite; from Goldflint Mountain area, Jefferson County, Montana. Collected in 1979. I need to learn how to take better pictures!!!


William C. (CHRIS) van Laer: "I'm using the chicken to measure it..."

Glad someone got the ball rolling on this. It was on the menu for today. Here is a shot of the catch of the summer. It's a chrysocolla stalactite from the Helvetia mining district south of Tucson. The stalactite is @ 2 cm . There are 2 opposing each other on a 10 cm specimen. dave Owen

This has to be my all time favorite, self collected in 1966. I had collected all day in 100 degree temperature, digging a hole that you couldn't see me in, and had found little to show for it. During the dig, I took out many crystal fragments, but nothing that I considered to be worth the effort. A small space between two Quartz ledges was filled with mud and Palygorskite, from which I pulled out a large number of gloppy masses and tossed them into my collecting bag. Later that night, by the campfire, I decided to soak them in water to loosen their encasements. To my surprise, many Epidote crystal sections were found, including these two specimens. The photo doesn't show the true luster of the specimens, which are very glassy.


Garnet Hill Mine (Rheona claim), Garnet Hill, Moore Creek - Mokelumne River confluence area, Calaveras Co., California, USA

The large crystal is 10cm in length, while the smaller is 5cm in length. These are only the terminations of what were half meter long crystals!

Gene

Great finds and interesting stories !
My contribution is a photo of a 4,5 cm perfectly euhedral icositetrahedron with dodecaedral faces of Grossular from Stig, Årvoll just a few kilometers North of the city center of Oslo. It is one of the first really good specimens I found in my early days of collecting back in 1965. I had purchased a copy of V.M.Goldschmidts famous monography on the contact metamorphic deposits of the Oslo region (Die Kontaktmetamorfose im Kristianiagebiet - 1911) and had started to track down the classic and long forgotten localities described in this book. Using my bike I travelled to Årvoll near the syenitic hills that mark the start of the huge wilderness area (Nordmarka) that makes Oslo such a unique capital. After a few hundred meters on a path in the forrest I found an abandoned quarry with a a small block of the cambrosilurian sediments frozen in the syenite. My heart nearly stopped when I managed to unearth this large Grossular crystal which to date may be the best found at this - since the mid 1970' ies protected locality - off limits to contemporary rockhounds. It remains one of my favorite self-collected specimens.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2011 04:51PM by Knut Eldjarn.

Boy oh Boy Jim,
You've started something here!!!

First, Marion KY fluorite from 2010 dig..

KOR
E

Back lit same specimen as above :)

E

Fluorite,Boulder Hill Mine, Wellington, Nevada. This was self collected back in the mid 1990's. Specimen measures 21 x 18 x 8 cm.

Gene: they look a lot like the ones we found in Hawthorne, Nevada, real nice!!

Here's one of my favorites: a pale smoky quartz crystal, on albite matrix, with numerous inclusions of pale blue aquamarine, found in the Homestake Pass area in 1988, right after the new road to Delmoe Lake was finished and opened to the public. the aplite-pegmatite outcropped just above the new roadbed, and the pocket was nearly 100% breached, with all the pocket contents having been found just a few feet below the outcrop. The crystal in this picture was found in the float, but the matrix it fit on was still attached to the outcrop!

Tantalite and montebrasite from Viitaniemi, Finland. Lucky find and extremely lucky trimming. The tantalite was first only a black knob on the surface of stone before I hammered the stone to halves without thinking too much. There are also pink beryl and apatite poorly visible in same specimen.

One of many I collected this year...

Native Sulfur, Steamboat Springs, Washoe Co., Nevada. This was self collected back in the late 1970's. The specimen measures 12 x 9 x 5 cm.

Stephanite, acanthite, and chlorargyrite on quartz, from the Champion Mine near Deer Lodge, Montana; collected from the dumps. Size: 3.7 x 2.9 x 2.9 cm.


William C. (CHRIS) van Laer: "I'm using the chicken to measure it..."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2011 05:37PM by William C. van Laer.

Topaz and smoky quartz crystals, found near Little Spangle Lake, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho, in August 1982. Size: 3.8 x 3.8 x 1.8 cm.


William C. (CHRIS) van Laer: "I'm using the chicken to measure it..."