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GeneralThe Problem of ALMOST Leaverites

29th Mar 2015 13:24 UTCBob Harman

I have been a field collector here in the Midwest for many years and over the years have managed to gradually restrict the finds that I take home to only those relatively few truly collectible/display quality examples. On any collecting trip, I leave most of what I find at the road cut for others to find and collect. My leaverites are common after I leave the road cut!

Yesterday I was out and about and came across several collecting acquaintances and others self collecting at a number of Indiana road cuts. They readily showed off their examples and most of them readily admitted that many of their collected examples were really leaverites with some having only small localized collectible areas within the specimen. I would ask them what they planned on doing with these many examples and they admitted they were in a quandary as they knew that they were more than just non display quality specimens and would accumulate to be forgotten, neglected, discarded or given away after a few months to years.

My threshold for what I call a leaverite example or an almost leaverite example has become higher than most other field collectors; in fact only 1 acquaintance has as hi or a higher threshold than me. All field collectors have their own thresholds for what they bring home.

So I ask you field collectors what are your thoughts? What do you do with your ALMOST leaverites? Do you bite the bullet and call them true leaverites, leaving them at the site or do you take them home and attempt to trim them down?, Clean and store them only to discard them after space runs out? Do you make it a regular procedure to give them away? Or what? This seems a common perennial problem for most field collectors.

Any thoughts? CHEERS……BOB

29th Mar 2015 14:33 UTCEd Clopton 🌟 Expert

Huge dilemma! I, too, have lots of material in that terrible grey area of being not quite good enough to keep, yet too good to pitch. There is also the greyish category of "Kinda neat; I found it myself, so I'll keep it, but I wouldn't pay for it." And, while we're at it, "This stuff doesn't interest me, but I'll bet somebody, somewhere, wants it, so I can't just dump it." For years I have toted around a flat of (at least it came to me labeled as) mcfallite from Michigan in that category.

Whether I take home borderline pieces depends on a) how likely they are to appeal to someone else, and b) what is likely to happen to them if left behind. In the latter case, if other collectors are likely to happen upon them, I'll more likely leave them. If they are likely to be crushed into concrete aggregate or graded back into the road, I'll probably take them with me.

The club where I lived previously runs a "Pebble Pit" for kids at its annual show, a big sandbox liberally salted with odds & ends that kids can dig for and take home at 25 cents/rock, usually with a sight ID by the club member tending the pit. A great many not-quite-leaverites find appreciative homes via the Pebble Pit.

Both clubs run silent auctions at their shows which are good outlets for better not-quite-keeper pieces that turn out to appeal to other buyers and generate revenue for the club at the same time.

29th Mar 2015 15:47 UTCWilliam W. Besse Expert

You gentlemen are forgetting a different category pf rocks, between leaverite and kidrockite. One that I have been a collector of for many decades. It is gardenrockite, a species that can take over the yard all by itself.

Bill

29th Mar 2015 17:24 UTCHolger Hartmaier 🌟

The potential range of specimen quality found by field collectors will depend on the collecting site. There is an expectation on the part of the collector to find specimens as good or better than those known to have been collected in the past. On any given collecting day, luck plays an important role in finding those "keeper" pieces. On a bad day, one is inclined to hang on to those few representative samples which may not match up to the better quality material that has eluded us. This is especially true when collecting at a site distant from home and not visited on a regular basis. However, if you are fortunate to live close to a collecting site, then you have more opportunity to return and try your luck again, until you find that choice specimen.

My personal collecting experiences have been primarily associated with short visits at sites distant from my home base and/or in remote areas. As such, I prioritize my time at the site to looking for specimens and spend little or no time sorting them out at the site. As a result I usually come home with a large amount of material that has to be sorted out. After processing, a few specimens will make it into the collection and the rest will be in that broad 'almost leaverite' category. The following are some suggestions on what can be done with this material rather than throwing it away:

- Consider the size class you are collecting. If for example you only want display quality cabinet or small cabinet size pieces, then thumbnail or micro specimens of aesthetic quality may be used for sale or trade.

- Use inferior quality pieces to test out cleaning procedures, especially those involving chemicals, where specimen damage is a risk.

- Use inferior pieces for destructive tests required for identification purposes, i.e. hardness, streak, dry or wet chemical analyses.

- Crystallized specimens with a few dings, but otherwise stable and robust for transport and handling can be used for study purposes. Every once in a while I give a mineral identification or introductory geology workshop at our local club and I bring in these types of specimens.

- Specimens exhibiting massive rather than crystal morphology are valuable for illustrating what more typical field specimens may look like and provide information on the geology and mineralogy of the deposit.

- Regardless of the quality of the specimen, provide a complete label (mineral name(s) and locality) with each donated or give-away piece.

- If possible, try to return any discarded material back to the original collecting site, especially if you live close to the site and visit there often. One of my tricks when visiting a site is to first check out the area in the immediate vicinity of the parking lot. Here is where a lot of collected stuff gets dumped at the end of the day and it could result in some decent specimens, especially if you only have a short time to visit.

I appreciate those collectors who leave a pile of "almost leaverites" in a prominent location at a site. It gives other collectors who have no idea of what to look for, some examples of the material and those who just want a souvenir piece a convenient option to collect.

Thanks for starting this thread. Hopefully it will help to save some decent pieces from the trash heap.

29th Mar 2015 17:35 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This is a big issue in my household. I love the act of collecting and have many places I pass things along to. My wife thinks we already have too much "rock" lying around. Yes, we have a rock yard on our 5 acres also and a lot of it ends up there.

As mentioned above, kids play a big part. I do geology badges for the local scouts and have a pile of rock by the parking lot and after the teaching is over I give each child a bag and point out the pile. They always have a ball and a lot of the nearly "leaverites" go home to probably end up in their yards. I always hope some are inspired to start collecting.

My wife said the other day, "if you go out collecting and bring home a few bags of minerals, you have to take just as much out and put it back" So far that has not caught on with me.

29th Mar 2015 18:29 UTCDoug Daniels

Just remember, if you throw your leaverites in your yard, in a few thousand years there are going to be a lot of very confused geologists trying to figure out what happened at your locale.

29th Mar 2015 18:52 UTCAlfred L. Ostrander

These leaverite threads can be quite interesting. One persons leaverite may be someone else's treasure. A number of years ago I was at a well known mine putting some time in at the flume washing out buckets for facet grade garnet. I was also hoping to maybe pull out a topaz. Every now and then a larger flush of water was released to help flush the flume. I'm sitting there during the flush and as the water flow ebbed I spied a rather nice columbite/tantalite crystal. OK, someone missed a goodie. This happened several more times during the day and I ended up with several c/t crystals I found on my own and three much nicer ones I found rolling down the flume during a flush. As I was leaving a man toward the front of the flume asked if I had found any facetable garnet or topaz. I showed him a few small pieces of each and one decent topaz crystal. I then showed him the c/t and said these were the real finds of the day. He looked at them and showed me a nice one he had found. He said several of the ones I had looked like ones he found and tossed aside in the flume. They weren't facet grade so he didn't want them. He did let me "trade" him for a nice piece of facetable garnet as it had been a pretty good day for me finding garnet. So we both went away very happy each with our own treasure.

So if you don't know what it is, it might not really be a leaverite. It might really be prize find!

Best Regards,

Al O

29th Mar 2015 19:04 UTCKyle Beucke 🌟

My experience is that I become more selective on later trips to the same site. Part of this has to do with getting a "search image" for the good stuff, and because I mostly collect ore-related sulfides, including silver minerals (often microscopic), I sometimes have little idea what I have found until I get home and check stuff out under the scope. After examining material for hours and recognizing textures, etc. associated with the minerals of interest, I can focus further collecting on rocks that look promising. This is also where a pile of stuff left by other collectors can give you a head start.

I can always give away extras at a local museum, university, friends yard, etc. I have never wished I had collected less material, but have at times wished I had taken more (especially for give-aways).

Kyle

29th Mar 2015 19:23 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

One item that I imagine everyone on here will also forget about leaverites is that most every mineral, every rock, every grain of sand, tells a story of the history of Earth. Let's face it, most of the folks on here are mineral collectors whether they field collect or silver pick at shows. They will be very discriminate about the minerals they collect, usually only keeping/buying the best and brightest for themselves while leaving the rest behind (the leaverites). As a field geologist interested in studying the Earth and how it formed, I'm looking for anything that will help me and other scientists determine such things as age, mode of emplacement, etc. If I'm in an area of minerals, of course I will look for good specimens, but I will also look at the rocks of the area to learn more. In this sense, what may be a leaverite to one might be a very important specimen to me. It's probably the reason why I have just as many rock samples as mineral specimens. You may ask "what does one do with all those rocks"? I usually keep one for a sample and cut up another for thin sections to examine under a petrographic microscope. Collecting rocks in addition to minerals has never been a problem in this household; I married a geologist who has never met a sample she didn't like! :-D

29th Mar 2015 19:51 UTCLuca Baralis Expert

About 20... no, say 30 years ago, I used to visit some abandoned mines not so far from my town. Nowadays many of them are off limits. And nowadays what I then regarded as leaverite could be of some interest for trading.

29th Mar 2015 19:53 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

It is funny, but this struwerite https://wiki.web.ru/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Str%C3%BCverite.jpg was somebody's leaverite. I found it right on the top of the dump pile close to somebody's digging hole.

Specimen was dirty, and I decided that this is dark-purple fluorite octahedron. And took it of course. When I begun to wash it, I saw a lot of dark particles which were eleminated from the stone together with soap foam. And decided that crystal begin to crush. But when I look on it under good light in dry state, my heart had jump out of my chest. This wasn't fluorite, but very complex twin of struwerite sitting in the center of druse cleavelandite xls.

Now the specimen is on exposition in Fersman's Mineralogical Musem of Moscow (you can to see it here on their site http://geo.web.ru/druza/l-Volodarsk.htm more close to the middle of the page).

It was really almost leaverite.

29th Mar 2015 20:18 UTCGary Moldovany

My wife and I have been selling mineral specimens at local shows for several years. I have a big bucket on the ground next to the table with a sign "free rocks for kids" That's where most of our "leaverites/almost leaverites" end up. We also give a boxed free specimen to every kid that comes to the table. We will give mineral id/labels on request, but most of the kids are just thrilled to get a rock. I have a few slightly annoyed parents grimacing when their kid takes the biggest rock he can find out of the bucket!

29th Mar 2015 21:08 UTCBob Harman

HI ALL !! Thanks for giving your thoughts and opinions to my posting! I do appreciate them. This question and dilemma has intrigued me over these many years ever since I have been an avid Indiana mineral collector.

What once was a "keeper" is often today thought of as a leaverite or near leaverite for others. Some of my early treasure is now my "junque".

As I originally noted, I now bring home only higher quality examples, leaving the rest for other collectors

At times I bring home lesser quality examples and either give them away to the kids or sell them at our local show.

We have a lot of rock examples (!) in the back yard flower beds and several 50# fluorite examples collected years ago in the southern Illinois district so I am familiar with yard and garden rock.

Some folks find small or relatively unusual minerals along with the larger specimens, but here in Indiana there is a rather simple mineral assemblage and tiny micro minerals, crusts, and other non displayable examples really don't much interest me so they become part of the leaverite group. Most of us can't keep everything!

CHEERS……BOB

29th Mar 2015 21:51 UTCBill Cordua 🌟 Manager

I too often do give-aways for kids - but I always make sure they get a label. OK, maybe they lose it five seconds later, but maybe not. We should set the example that identity and location are important suppliments of specimens. Labels are a real asset when the kids show off the samples to their friends or family or maybe take them to show-and-tell at school or maybe go on-line (MIN-DAT?) to read more about them. I've had the experience of doing the rock I.D. table at local rock shows and having kids bring up samples for I.D. and when I ask them where they found them they sometimes say "From that guy's table over there." So I have to guess what's in that person's "give-away" bucket. I'll sometimes send the kids back to "that guy's" table and let him/her do the ID. I mean, I have no idea where these pieces came from. They could be anything from anywhere, and I'm sort drafted into doing the dealer's or collector's work for them. So be sure you give a label with the sample when you get rid of your "almost leaverites". OK? Thank you. End of rant.

30th Mar 2015 00:49 UTCD Mike Reinke

Another astute, and hilarious, thread.

I find many more almost- leaverites than kids to give them to, [who doesn't] and also have a place in the yard for 'miscellaneous.' I sometimes remember tossing something that I realize later has something to it, something I missed before. Not necessarily valuable, but I'd at least I'd like another look, usually inspired by a mindat photo...Also, I have gotten into micros, which completely changes my view of so much that I have tossed.

My main collecting site is Lake Michigan, a lake big enough to have a current, so the 'field,' beach in this case, is ever changing, even though 99.99% is a recycling of the same stuff. Since I bring home anything interesting or with potential to have something inside, most of the 'miscellaneous' area is the 'no longer interesting,' and 'failed potential.' I sometimes revisit it, on days when i can't get out. It is handy sometimes to have an 'almost leaverite' pile nearby.

30th Mar 2015 15:43 UTCD. Peck

I found that the quantity of material I brought home was inversely proportional to my age. The older I got, the less I wanted to carry. In fact as I got older, and as I am a micro mounter, I didn't even carry anything heavier than a three pound crack hammer. I just looked at what others were throwing away. They mostly didn't pay any attention to those little vugs.

30th Mar 2015 16:21 UTCEd Clopton 🌟 Expert

I want to reinforce what some others have said about labeling: For any disposition of near-leaverite other than back into the ground, it really should have a label of some sort with it. Giving kids labels with their give-aways, even of genuine leaverite, establishes a useful habit that at least some will take to heart. And if Pavel Kartashov's struverite had turned up unlabeled in a silent auction somewhere, it would be a puzzling curiosity worth the few bucks it would bring, but with a simple locality label it could be rescued and properly appreciated.

Label, label, label!

1st Apr 2015 16:41 UTCDana Morong

Ed Clopton's advice to Label is very good. I have occasionally brought back extra material to a site, but only if I am absolutely certain that it came from that site and no other! Otherwise, one can contaminate the specimen base. In one case, a friend found a specimen at the site that already had a label on it, in my writing, as from that site.

This reminds me of one of those stories that Peter Zodac used to tell in old issues of Rocks and Minerals magazine. This one was from the late 1930s or early 1940s I think (I have a copy of it at home but not with me at the moment), and dealt with James Manchester bringing labeled specimens to a mine in Bedford, New York, to help field trippers who may not have been able to find something good (this man actually helped others, quite a contrast to some modern-day collectors who take everything that they can), and one day forgot some on the dumps. A few days later some collectors found labeled specimens on the dump, and wondered who was so kind as to leave them there!

There was also an article in Rocks and Minerals magazine quite later (in the 1970s) called Mineral Litter. This was about people who dump unwanted specimens on a site, which originated at another site. This should be discouraged; it can confuse the locality/species database. However, there is one way of doing it that is not mineral litter, and quite nice, and that is to dump the unwanted stuff near the site, but not on the site, so that people know it didn't originally come from there (such as several hundred feet away). I once found a box with specimens on the trail to a mineral site, and the guy was still there, so I asked the location of the material. At home I broke open the rusty bit from the Mascot mine (Gorham, N.H.) and there was some tiny (micro) blue crystals within. I finally figured these to be linarite. They were very nice. There was also a nice specimen of vesuvianite from Sanford, Maine.

However, even when specimens are left near a site, it can confuse those who don't know minerals. Years ago I visited a couple, who were schoolteachers, and, if you go by what they had scattered all over the yard, picked up every shiny rock they found (but I don't think learned much), and they showed me a superb specimen (this one was in their house) of albite, lepidolite, elbatite (the elbaite was pink and green) that they were positive were from the Palermo mine in Groton, N.H. They had found a rock in the parking area (about a quarter mile downhill from the Palermo mine) and broke it open, and found the wonderful specimen within. No amount of telling them could convince them that someone had, possibly inadvertently, left the specimen when moving stuff from the trunk of the car (or possibly some frustrated spouse had "cleaned out" the trunk!) and that such elbaite was never found at Palermo mine, but most likely originally came from Maine, possibly Newry.

6th Apr 2015 01:20 UTCToby Billing

A lot of mine comes back home and ends up in a box with a location and date in pencil in it to be broken up and checked for micros at a later date. When I do get around to doing that breaking and close inspection the leverites then get chucked in the driveway or used for filling holes in the paddocks depending on the size and possibility of damaging car tires.

Vast shed space, a long driveway and paddocks with a 160 year mining history are handy for this process and the collection to end product seems to take years.

6th Apr 2015 03:07 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

What Dana wrote about "Mineral Litter" reminds me of some franklinite+willemite I found on the quarry floor at Mont Sainte Hilaire. :-S (No I did not add franklinite and willemite to the MSH species list.)

Please, everyone, leave your "leaverites" in the place you found them, or in your own garden, or in a city rubbish dump, not at the next mineral locality you visit!

6th Apr 2015 08:12 UTCUwe Ludwig

The contamination of original locations by strange material seems to be an international problem and the reason are not only flippant collectors which clean their back bags before they enter a new locations.

This contamination is annoying but sometimes also helpful. So for example I picked up some “strange” material at the side of a dump and I saw in a moment that this material came from another dump about 3 miles away. I took some of these pieces at home and I found a nice micro specimen of deep orange wulfenite on green pyromorphite among them.

However, sometimes there are also the mining industries which cause such locality mixing. Before 1990 the SDAG Wismut stored rich silver ore from the shaft in Pöhla on a big dump in Schlema (No.371/1). A little bit hard to get it because this dump was strictly guarded by the police. Later in 2008 they stored on the same dump in Schlema material including walpurgite coming from safety activities of the ancient mines in Schneeberg.

Sometimes such contamination is a chance especially of collectors of micro minerals but you have to know the locations of the region and the rocks there very well.

Rgds.

Uwe Ludwig

8th Apr 2015 16:00 UTCDale Foster Manager

For many of the site I have collected I don't really have any so called 'leaverites' simply because given what I specialise in the quality of self collected specimens can be variable. Sometimes there is very little Cassiterite in the specimens but if it is from a new location or the matrix and any associations is unusual it goes home any way.

On some locations where Cassiterite is fairly common e.g. Cligga Mine, then I will tend to be more choosy about what goes home.

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