Favorite Self-Collected Specimens

Chris, that's a beauty!

@ Matt - thanks, I'll try the same specimen outside. I'm pretty experienced in outdoor photography but small mineral specimens are a big challenge - perhaps a tighter aperture would be good too (I used f8 in the shot above). David Green has photographed a lot of my specimens over the years and the results he gets with microcrystals are superb, but my photographic gear is all landscapes/skyscapes oriented.

Cheers - John

Here is one from about 1970 from a little-known Wyoming location that is sometimes given as "Oshoto, Crook County." The golden barite is on calcite and is 2.2 cm long. Overall size 10x7x6 cm. A slightly older, nearby concretion zone produced clear crystals of some size but the surface exposure of concretions was very limited.



Cheers!

Steve

And another from the concretion zones around the Black Hills uplift: Barite on calcite, Edgemont, Fall River County, South Dakota. Crystal cluster 6.0 cm. long. Overall size is
9x9x5 cm. Circa late 1960's.



Cheers!

Steve

A nice reverse scepter from goboboseb with some white prehnite and calcite.

Another geode from the (old) SR37 locality north of Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana. This one contains a bright, micro quartz lining with sharp psudomorphs of soft limonite after saddle-shaped dolomite or ferroan dolomite crystals. Geode opening width: 8 cm.



Cheers!

Steve



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/2011 06:05PM by Stephen Rose.

This is a piece I found about 2 months ago while turning over our older dump piles preparing for our main dig at Diamond Hill in South Carolina. I thought it was something, and ask a friend, Jason Barret, to grab it to see if it was anything. I was on the trackhoe and didnt feel like climbing down out of it to check, one of those lazy days,lol Figured the piece would be mediocre at best and was gonna just give it to him or one of the visitors that day, but when he plucked it out of the ground I decided to go ahead and keep it

THe second and third are pieces from Diamond Hill Mine also, they are also some favorites that are self collected.

Have a few beryl pieces from the Hogg Mine that I'l have to post sometime, they get huge there!
Also have some very odd epimorph pieces that a few on here would enjoy seeing, I'll have to hunt those up again.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2011 04:55AM by Bryan Major.

Collecting Indiana geodes at the IN 56 road cut about 7 miles East of Salem, Indiana in Washington, County can be very rewarding, but very dangerous. Best collecting is in late winter and early spring after freeze/thaw cycles when rock is wet and loose. At these times it is actively falling from the overhang in either small bits or large masses. If you stay close to the wall you are hit by falling rock and if away from the wall, you are hit by passing cars! This specimen, found in 2007, consists of a 7.5cm x 5cm geode containing a 2.6cm sphalerite crystal centrally located within the dolomite and quartz cavity. The crystal has mirror bright surfaces in most areas.

Hey Bob, It looks like its well worth the risks ! Very Cool

Here's a Garnet specimen with Calcite we self collected back in the late 1970's from Garnet Hill, Calaveras Co., Ca. The specimen measures 7 x 4 x 4 cm.

I tried to post this self-collected Indiana geode specimen recently, but for unknown reasons the thread changed so here goes again.

Dew drop diamond geodes are found throughout the Midwest, but are rare and very collectible. The term was coined sometime before Steve Sinotte's 1960 book on "The Fabulous Keokuk Geodes" where he discusses them quite extensively. The name refers to the very lusterous bipyramidal quartz crystals existing individually or contiguously on white chalcedony and sparkling like dew in the early morning sunlight. Indiana examples can be very dark smoky as these are. I have about 20 examples of which these 2 halves of 2 different geodes are 2 of my better ones, but at about 5 cm x 5 cm, far from my largest. I have found these dark smokies in only one small area of Monroe County, Indiana and these were collected about 10 years ago. ENJOY!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2011 12:05PM by BOB HARMAN.

Although I specialize in Indiana minerals.......especially geodes, I do have the opportunity to go on Ohio quarry field trips. In our August 2006 field trip to Auglaize quarry near Auglaize, Ohio this large iridescent fluorite/calcite combination was found. It measures about 14 cm x 10 cm in a large matrix piece.

The events of the find are noteworthy . Auglaize quarry is a sporadic producer of these type specimens, though usually much smaller. About 10 minutes from the time to exit the quarry, a boulder was found when one collector moved on. Hammering it smartly with a sledge opened this vug and I madly began collecting it as everyone was being told by quarry personnel to leave as the trip was ending. I managed to get it into the truck and it was the best find of that trip. Cheers!

Here's a beryl I collected at Frank Perham's Waisanen Quarry during the 2010 Maine Pegmatite Workshop. We got the opportunity to collect in in a freshly blasted area immediately after Frank and his miners had checked the area. I wasn't finding much until the guy next to me offered to help me roll a boulder out of our way. Once it was gone, I picked up this rock, turned it over & found this beryl.



OK, so it's ugly, broken and repaired - it's still the biggest crystal I've collected.

My final post for the day. Barite is found in geodes throughout the American Midwest, but the best crystals arguably occur in Indiana geodes (I would like someone out there to show me a large killer barite from a Midwest geode other than from Indiana). The barites can be single or in groups and occur as stout or delicate crystals. They occur alone or in combination with calcite, dolomite, and other geode minerals. They usually are whitish thru shades of yellow and greenish yellow. The best are from Monroe and Washington counties, with good examples also found in Brown and Lawrence counties. This barite grouping includes a delicate pristine 2.6 cm doubly terminated transparent yellow crystal along with other smaller pristine crystals. The geode is about the size of a large grapefruit and was found about 2000 at the Harrodsburg road cuts in Southern Monroe County Indiana.

This is a large, super gemmy Stromatolite with clear, white and smokey quartz inclusions. I found this specimen at StoneCo, Auglaize Quarry in Paulding Ohio

My favourite for today at least and one of my most recent finds, found it a few days ago. Berringa Victoria area, large thumb nail size with a bright bit of gold that looks just like someone caved out a square hole in the quartz and poked in a little nugget.

It looks much better than my rather poor photo shows.

While millerite is uncommon and revered in Indiana geodes, its nickel oxidation products such as honessite and jamborite are even more rare and their classification is somewhat muddled. This geode, about 15 cm across, has several groups of bright grass green honessite(?). The best group is not well visualized in my photo but can just be seen poking out from behind the quartz crystals in the lower center of the geode cavity. Found in 2007 at the Harrodsburg road cuts in Southern Monroe County, Indiana.

Great millerite, Bob!

Has anyone ever identified the orange mineral that is pseudo millerite from the Rt 37 occurrence north of Bloomington?

Cheers!

Steve

Hallo,

hier ein Eigenfund aus dem Steinbruch Kamsdorf,Thüringen,Deutschland:
Diese Calcit-Stufe habe ich unter kurzwelligen UV-Licht aufgenommen.Ungewöhnlich:Nur der Rand leuchtet dabei auf.
Größe 7cm.
Und nochmal im Tageslicht.

Jetzt das Stück im UV-Licht