Favorite Self-Collected Specimens

I guess this quartz sample will be one of my all time favourites of self-collected. Not in my collection anymore, but exibited in the Geological Museum of Oslo - where a lot more people can enjoy it compared to my private "cave".




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2011 09:10PM by Peter Andresen.

Here are some of my favorites. A bunch of less than .5 ct sapphires collected at Gem Mountain, Montana. And one that I had heat treated and cut. When in the rough, it was 3.36 carats and when cut, it turned out to be 1.23 carats! I just love it!

Here's a favorite axinite with actinolite and albite that was self collected back in 1976 during the construction of the New Melones Spillway, Calaveras Co., California. It measures 10 x 9 x 3 cm. This specimen was totally encased in a block of fine grain palygorskite which took many tens of hours to remove with a very thin needle probe. No liquid was used to avoid the actinolite needles from getting matted into cow licks.






Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2011 12:10PM by Rock Currier.

Jay,
That's the second best one I ever saw. Sure wish you would upload it to our database so we could put it in the best Minerals article.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Great finds. I love the axinite. Well done cleaning that one!

Jay,

That is a beutifully prepared axinite specimen and the best I have seen from Cali or almost anywhere. I was happy to get a large single crystal without matrix but nothing like your specimen. Thanks for posting.

Best,

Joe

Enjoying everyone's posts, very inspiring (:D

Peter - that is a treasure and belongs in a museum! Thank you for sharing that awesome twin.

Jay - everyone else beat me to it... that's an incredible axinite and even more so as being self collected.

stephanie :))

I am new to this so please bare with me I found this in Pismo Beach Calif . please comment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2011 06:38PM by Jody Baker.

Here are almandine-spessartines in quartz found from Kerava ending of Savio rail tunnel in 2006. Largest garnets are about 20 mm in size. Quartz was easy to trim and they come out of it nicely. I can't remember breaking anything.

The collecting of stones that look like plants, animals, symbols and people or parts of people have centuries long historical tradition and some of these items have sold for large sums of money, especially if they have religious connotations. I remember one collector who got together a whole table full of stones and rocks that looked like food and plates etc and displayed at several federation shows their table of food look alike but all from stone. Most collectors today I think view them with little enthusiasm and at best amusement. I think most knowledgeable collectors would not pay much money for them and perhaps suspect that those who do collect them as probably not very knowledgeable about minerals. I myself find them mildly interesting and sometimes amusing, but would not go out of my way to put one in my collection. It will be interesting to see what other say.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Personally, (considering Rock's statement) I only like gold, copper, and herkimer formations.

-Rowan Lytle

son: -picks up huge loose amethyst cluster- "Is this what we're looking for?"
father: "Holy #$@%!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2011 01:10AM by Rowan Lytle.

Stibnite, McLaughlin Mine, Knoxville, Knoxville District, Napa Co., California. Self collected from a bench shortly after the dust from the blast settled. It's amazing the blast didn't turn these hair like stibnite crystals into dust as well.

Got some serious competition here. But it is great to see that such terrific specimens can still be found. Here's one of my favourites, found in 1989, in the dump of Scotland's historic Alva silver mine (discovered in 1715). The matrix has been removed with dilute acid. Specimens of this size and richness are extraordinarily rare from Alva, there being very few "old time" pieces, and most of those found in the dump by modern collectors being micro or thumbnail. A miner must have screwed up to let this one through. I'm glad he did!
[www.mindat.org]

Stephen, WOW that's one really fine silver and self collected to boot! congratulations on your find!!

Great stibnite, Jay.

This is a geode half from the 'Olden Days' in Indiana. It is from the well-known aragonite locality in the Lower Harrodsburg Limestone on (old) SR37, about 5.5 miles north of Bloomington in Monroe County. My file indicates that I collected it in 1965 and that I traded the other half to Joe Balaban, a pseudomorph collector. There is a central band of pale yellow barite crystals surrounded by aragonite with rhombs of calcite and aragonite-coated calcite on the margins. The early iron oxides are common at this locality. Approximately 18 cm. in diameter.




Cheers!

Steve

Found it hard to narrow it down to these three but...anyway, my mineral photography skills are improving and as promised, here they are.

Now some of you guys in Montana, Arkansas, and the mountainous areas of California are lucky enough to have access to lots of quartz crystal digging sites, but here in Idaho, good well formed quartz crystals are rare- unless you know where to look. I found this quartz crystal with one of the side faces sticking out of a cut bank by a logging road, exposed during the spring runoff. Until I plucked it out, I had never seen a quartz crystal this color before- a beautiful "Whisky on the Rocks" golden yellow. It may not be rare or valuable, but I like it because of the color as well as, well, the fact that I found it.

This site is actually known more for it's epidote crystals, and here is one of several that I dug from the same site. This was the original reason I went to this spot. (it's right above one of the logging roads on USFS land behind the Valley County Landfill) There were a few fully terminated crystals, and at least one which was larger than this one (which is about 1.5" tall) but I liked the color and luster of this one best, so I picked it for this thread.

Last but not least is a cabinet-sized andradite garnet cluster from the Hells Canyon-Cuprum mining district. While well-formed individual crystals are rare here, you can find some nice clusters like this one.

Just had a go at photographing a malachite specimen I collected around 1988 from the Llechweddhelyg mine in Central Wales. Mineral photography is clearly fairly tricky! Some larger specimens were collected back then but this minature (the longest crystal sheaf's approx 15mm long) remains my favourite from the site to this day. As dealers often say it looks better in person!

Cheers - John

Calcite,Rattlesnake Bridge Prospect (Alabaster Cave; Rattlesnake Bar), El Dorado Co., California. Measures 10 x 5 x 3 cm. Self collected in the late 1970's.

The Boulder Batholith of SW Montana has numerous pegmatites, much like the Pike's Peak area of Colorado and Conway, New Hampshire...amethyst and especially "scepters" of amethyst are common here, and some of the best scepters found in the U.S. come frome here. this is an example of a nice amethyst scepter I collected at the famous Pohndorf Mine south of Butte. It is 4.2 cm long by 1.8 x 1.6 across at the "head".


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

@John Mason: That is a cool looking Malachite cluster; and the photo didnt turn out too badly. I, too, am somewhat amateur in that respect, but one thing I discovered is that my photos seem to turn out better in natural daylight as opposed to indoor incandescent light. My first attempts (in a different thread) were under filament light and the pics turned out darker and more yellowish than they should have, which distorted the natural colors of the specimens.
@William Van Laer: SW Montana is about six hours from where I live, and hopefully next summer I'll make it out there! Just got a new incentive... I have heard of sceptered smoky quartz crystals being found at a site about 60 miles north of Boise, but I have never personally found any there (I did find some nice schorl crystals at that spot, though)