Have the reverse-skeletal Madan galenas been faked?

How I prove it? very easy!
Only one dealer bring them to the market (I will not put name here). All other dealers have specimens from him. This dealer told that he bought whole pocket etc. But I know people who work with him, and were "producing" this specimens.
I do not know how many time you visited Madan, but I after tens of trips know that there is only very few people working with specimens and they know immediately about each pocket. Before dealer from far Sofia will buy anything local miners/dealers have all specimens. Some of them have netter ones, other not so good. But at least few crystals you can see in locals houses. But you will never find this galenas from Madan! What is more - this kind of skeletal/hollow galenas are only from 1 mine - 9th September. There is only 3 person working there for specimens (it is closed mine, entering there illegal, some they I will post photos of pockets). I was talking with all them showing photos of specimens - they all told me that this are faked specimens. To find something in this mine you have to go for 20 hours and you have to know "secret" roads. So, it is impossible that dealer from Sofia went there and found this pocket. He also didn't bought it from locals. What is more - each mine have some characteristic specimens. And as I have written before - there are skeletal crystals of galena - but never in this shape.
I work in Madan for many years, and well know all local dealers and majority of miners which collect. What is more I have so good contact with locals that if there is some important pocket I have call the same day.
Concluding: I am 100% sure that this are faked specimens.

Tomek

PS In majority of cases galena is younger than quartz and chlorite, it is very common to have inclusions of "quartz" in galena.

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"Spirifer" Geological Society

Thanks Tomek, Between your sleuthing and Jessica's discoveries I think we can put this to rest.

Tomasz,

Thank you for the detailed analysis and detective work.

Rob,

I hope so; but don't bet on it. A fellow I know who owns several is still in denial. This thread is like the creature in the movie Alien.

Happy New Year,

Joe

Joseph - you could have that person take their pieces to Lance Kearns at JMU in Harrisonburg, VA to look at them with the SEM. Lance said that he would be willing to look at other hollow galenas that people brought in after the discovery was published.
Jessica

Hello Jessica and Rob. Despite the avatar, this is JIM Spann (last time I tried to register on Mindat, I blew up the system...long story.) Any way, Jessica, a truly wonderful piece of research. I had to come out of my lurking mode to compliment you.
As Rob knows from talking to Gail, we have one of the older skeletal galenas that we acquired from a highly reputable dealer in May 2006. (Paid about what it cost to send a young lady to university for a semester!) After reviewing your work, I looked at our catalog...just as Tomek said, came from Ninth September Mine, Madan. As Joe mentioned, I have been in the denial category for a long time. I pulled our piece out of the cabinet and studied it under our stereo microscope up to 45x.
All the characteristics that you described were present...plus one more: the quartz crystals were pitted just like your SEM photos, but only on faces near the etched galena...then I found it. An entire stack of spherical glass beads in a cavity that would not have been self cleaning. Dozens of them! They appear to be much larger than 13 microns. About 6-8 across to equal the width of my fine pick point.
I can only conclude that these have been manufactured for at least the last four years. For kickers, I was told that there were only a handful ever found! (groan) I started getting suspicious when more and more kept appearing. Classic lesson here: caveat emptor!
Great job! Keep it up young lady! (and Dad)
Jim

Gail Patricia Copus Spann

Jessica, Tomasz and all the others willing to maintain the interest to get to the bottom of the issue; congratulations on the effort to provide the information and allow for conclusion to this issue to be started.

The perverse part of this episode is that these galena's will likely take on an interesting status amongst the mineral community for ever more even as fakes because of all the discussion that we as a mineral group undertook.

Just think, their value will be in the future, where we may have collectors that specialize in the many faked minerals that have and will appear in the years to come, and the Madan Galena's will always be remembered as one of the leaders in trickery. Who knows, they might get more valuable than the untouched ones due to their "rarity" ...yep, its a mad mad world.

And to everyone, a warm and happy x-mas and new year from a crazy Tasmanian,

And to all peoples in snowy Europe....field collecting zeolites at the moment is not a good idea..(:P)

Andrew Tuma

Jim Spann

I remember taking a close look at your Madan Galena's while you were setting up at the East Coast Gem Show in Springfield Ma. for your 53 case display that I was videoing in 2009, I was almost certin at the time that they looked fake, the inside edges looked too rounded to me to be real natural.
But I was also thinking that someone, with alot of time, had done a pritty good job. ;)

Wayne Corwin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2010 03:30PM by Wayne Corwin.

Remember the dealers who handled these are as much the victims as the collectors. They have all been defrauded by the original suppliers.

I think however that dealers who lost out on this now have sufficient evidence to press for criminal proceedings against those who created/supplied them in the beginning.

Jolyon

Here is a video I did of Gail & Jim Spann's Specimen I mentioned earlyer.
Spann's Hoppered Galena's
Best viewed in full screan.

Wayne Corwin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2010 03:32PM by Wayne Corwin.

Thanks Jim and Andrew!

Sorry about your piece Jim... but look on the bright side, as Andrew said, it could even gain value!

I was wondering where these were really made. Obviously the galena is from Bulgaria, but were they "enhanced" by local miners in Bulgaria or by dealers in other countries after they came out of Bulgaria? It could even be some of both - the original galenas were made in Bulgaria, and when dealers saw the high prices the Bulgarian pieces were selling for, they decided to copy the technique. That would at least explain the different types of abrasives used!

thanks for the video, Wayne!

Jessica

Jessica and Bob,

Thanks for sticking with this.

From someone who has spent many years in a mineral prep lab, it was really obvious to me, how these were made.

In fact, I got a lot of grief for showing my simple example of how it is done, so I am glad to see the evidence of glass beads show up in your investigations.

Again, this shows what a wonderful resource we have today, communication through Mindat.

Best Regards,

Ryan

I first saw these skeletal galena specimens in Tucson, 2006, at the Executive Inn. The year before I had visited this dealer and purchased a nice calcite. So, in 2006, I asked the dealer what was new. He showed me these specimens. I seem to remember that he only had ten or so in total. He had set aside a few of the best ones for someone from some museum to have a look........although that person was supposed to have been there already.

I returned a day or two later to look again........the museum never came by, but the dealer was excited because he had sold a couple specimens to a well known American dealer. Although I really didn't know much about galena or Bulgaria, the lure of finding the "sleeper rock" was too much to pass up.......so purchased a nice one with greenish-yellow sphalerite, chalcopyrite, and quartz.

A couple of months later I was in Dallas for a MAD meeting, where I met Jim and Gail. While we were comparing notes on
recent acquisitions, we talked of our "birdcage" galenas. They told me they had purchased theirs from the American dealer, and how interesting that two of the very few of these now resided in Texas.

The story of the skeletal galenas at that time was that the Bulgarian dealer visited the area, and bought some uncleaned
specimens from local miners. It was only when he was cleaning the minerals that he discovered a few of the hollow cubes, and that the local miners didn't know what they had. He was going to return and see if he could get some more of the uncleaned bulk material.

When questions arose as to the authenticity of the galenas, I had a sinking feeling, because the dealer also sold mineral
preparation equipment.....water guns, clippers, trimmers, etc. I had hoped that these first ones were still authentic, and that maybe only the newer specimens were manufactured.......but if Jim and Gail's "one of the original ten" was faked, then mine probably was too. I guess I need to have a look under a good microscope.

Paul

Jessica & Robert,

Thank you very much to a wonderful article and posting the results of your continued investigation. This thread has been quite the captivating discussion, and thanks again to everyone for keeping it alive with each new piece of the puzzle. Tomasz & Jim, thanks for your corroborative stories as well.

I was very hesitant about them previously, but now I am interested in getting one simply to have one of these very clever fakes!

Best regards,
Jonathan

Once again, it is so simple (probably too simple for many): WHAT LOOKS LIKE A FAKE MUST BE A FAKE!
And now, let´s talk about all these "old German" wire silvers which appeared out of nowhere during the last couple of years.... Absolutely NO lawyers comments please....B)B)B)

Jorge Muñoz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Once again, it is so simple (probably too simple
> for many): WHAT LOOKS LIKE A FAKE MUST BE A FAKE!
>
> And now, let´s talk about all these "old German"
> wire silvers which appeared out of nowhere during
> the last couple of years.... Absolutely NO lawyers
> comments please....B)B)B)

Probably a lot too much money involved to talk about those.

Thanks everyone.
Jorge - I don't think that's necessarily true. For example, the Mindat gallery of galena has a lot of pictures of galena that looks like the hollow fakes we discussed in this thread, but aren't exactly the same. Some are hollowed down only one axis, some aren't even completely hollow, and some just have unusual etching pattens. These pieces look like the fakes, but that doesn't mean they are.

Jessica

> Probably a lot too much money involved to talk about those.

The Himmelsfurst silvers?

With a 99.99% purity silver content, these have to be fake.

Lawyers for angry mineral dealers can contact me via the normal channels, and will receive the normal response :)

Jolyon

At the risk of Hijacking another thread...

What is the composition of honest Himmelfurst Ag? There are localities that do produce near 100% Ag wires. In addition, the process used to grow the Imiter fakes and purportedly the Himmelfurst fakes does occur in nature at some localities that produce these stringy wires thickened at the base. A decade or so ago these Himmelfurst wires were selling for obscene amounts. Then with the controversy they disappeared from the market. Now they are making an occasional return at somewhat reduced prices, but with no comment about authenticity. I understand there was a problem with the provenance of the Himmelfurst wires that also needed addressing before accepting them as real specimens. When nature uses the same method as fakers, provenance is crucial.

I disagree that 99.99% Ag purity indicates fakery; as Rob points out, Nature too makes surprisingly pure silver wires - The process just doesn't accomodate a lot of the other metals that are commonly present in such parageneses. Nevertheless, with the allegedly Himmelfurst wires no one seems concerned with the locality provenance, only with their natural origin. I would have liked to see matrix, in order to check the reality of the locality attribution. Their natural origin doesn't worry me nearly as much as those galena frames did, as we already know that Nature herself makes plenty of similar silver wires.

Alfredo, without matrix you can't tell if they are fake, so locality provenance is all you have left. That was questionable as I recall.