spirifer collection-new photos

Hello!
I added fresh photos ( just taken in Munich ) of news from Spirifer collection -
here are the new specimens from Madagascar - all were bought during our last trip in the summer (VIII-IX.09)
[www.spiriferminerals.com]
and here a few photos - calcite from India also comes from our last summer trip (VI.09)
[www.spiriferminerals.com]
All the photos taken by Jeff Scovil,

best wishes from Morocco!
Tom

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"Spirifer" Geological Society

Thanks for sharing Tom. In the first link, the last picture of andradite is the closest I have ever seen to a cubic garnet!!! Although the cube faces are small. the xl is clearly box like with large dodec modifications. In the second link, why does the platy Batopilas Silver look so much like gold???

Hi, thanks!
Of course it is gold, from the USA, I must have made this funny mistake while pasting the new photos.

Best regards,
Tom

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"Spirifer" Geological Society

Hey Tom,

Is that 2nd calcite mislabelled? It sure looks like a Rodgerly Fluorite to me...

Hi

Nice pix, but - don't want to be a party pooper ,but isn't this blatant advertising - didn't think this was allowed in the forum
Cheers

Keith is right, you know. What is good for one must be for all...a small ad cheque made out to Mindat, I am sure will
calm the waters, Tomasz..[LOL]
That being said, nice job by Jeff on your little crystals, they all look extremely
attractive.
Kind of makes one want to go to Madagasgar...kind of makes me want to , actually.

I really appreciate the postings on agates, Madagascar, almost cubic garnet, etc. by Tom and Spirifer, but I have been wondering just what Spirifer is? On the one hand it seems like a club or society and there is also a commercial website. Tom please enlighten us.

Although we are a "non commercial" website we accept advertising money and have relied on internet dealers to upload their photos. There has been some debate over whether we should allow links to dealer's websites on their photos. Somewhere there is a line between blatant advertising and good information that we would like. In the last day or so I noted and deleted a message advertising a gemmy Colorado allanite that according to the poster was desired by major museums and although the price was not yet set, they were soliciting bids for for about ten grand from interested Midaters. Personally, if the stock market would only cooperate, I might be interested in such a specimen and if a picture of a large gemmy allanite had been supplied I would have been conflicted over deleting it. Every manager here has the possibilty of deleting posts and probably everyone of us would draw the line in a different place. I think the point is to be reasonable.

Quote

Keith is right, you know. What is good for one must be for all...a small ad cheque made out to Mindat, I am sure will
calm the waters, Tomasz..[LOL]

Ray, Tomasz will be disappointed that you haven't spotted the banner ad from his ad cheque.

The Spirifer website does have some minerals for sale, but as far as I can tell, the specimens on the pages Tom has posted links to are not for sale, but part of the society's private collection. Considering that Tom does pay for advertising on Mindat, I personally have no problem with this.

Fully agree with Jesse,
Tomek pays for ad, he has his photos and other stuff mostly under CC license, he reports with great pictures, he provides literature (agate) ... and i do not see any direct link to his selling activities and we should be glad if folks share this here.
Would someone think about to delete all the pics of Rob Lavinsky for '2nd level advertising'?????

cheers
Roger
(who also sells minerals but does not pay for an ad here (hobbyist!) and therefore - in conformity to the rules - doesn´t link to sales )

Generally we prefer people post photos here rather than link to an external website, but as has been mentioned before, Tomasz is an advertiser here, he helps pay to keep the site running, so we can afford him a little more flexibility on this when it's non-commercial linking like this.

Jolyon

I must make those LOL letters much much bigger next time...

I do acknowledge that Tomasz advertises and by so doing supports Mindat, and supports us also with his great pics, but
just couldn't resist the opportunity to poke a bit of fun...

so sorry, Tomasz.....a little devil made me do it, really he did...

Hello!

I see I started a big debate, Thanks for all nice words about my activity here.
I am sorry if someone felt it is not right to paste here such links, I will not do it again in such case, but I will keep on pasting the reports' links and things like that if that's ok? I think on mindat I can find the biggest group of people who are interested in what we write.

And about Spirifer Society - As a society we carry out a range of
educational activities - we provide a free weekly geology and mineralogy
leesons for young children [www.pracownia.spirifer.org] ,
organize trips for children (during holidays and weekends) and also for adults interested in geology. We also publish and distribute a free newspaper called "Minarały" ("Minerals" )
( [www.mineraly.waw.pl] ) . We co-organize the biggest mineral event in Poland in Lwowek Slaski (we are in charge of the strictly mineralogical attractions such as exhibitions). Here is the exhibition from this year [www.vtour.pl]
Sometimes we prepare time-exhibitions in some polish geology museums. Generally we try to interest people in Poland in geology and mineralogy (and believe me it is not easy here )
All of these we do non-profit as the purpose of our society, and apart from that we of course sell minerals as you know,
but we always keep the best specimens from all of our trips and purchases to Spirifer collection , in the future we are planning to open a museum - which is our dream. We already took some steps in order to do it, and I hope it will succeed.
I'd like to add that as Jesse wrote, the specimens I pasted the links to, are new acquisitions to our collection and are not for sale.
Anyway sorry once more!

Best wishes to everybody!
Tom

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"Spirifer" Geological Society



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/06/2009 08:04PM by Tomasz Praszkier.

Tom no need to apolgize. You and Spirifer are doing excellent work and I thank you for telling us about it. Please keep posting all the good photos and information. I wish you every success with your dream!!!

Thomas,
Why don't you upload some of those images to Mindat, especially the andradites. I know we could use them in the Best Minerals/The Good Stuff articles.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Thanks, Rob!

Rock - Sure, I will do that, I have also some more photos of nice demantoids specimens that I am going to upload as soon as I am back from Morocco, cause here it would be technically difficoult.

Best wishes,
Tom.

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"Spirifer" Geological Society

I am hoping that you will NOT STOP posting pictures Tomasz
They are always worthy of looking at and of interest
I really like your focus on kids, and this is in parallel with my own
efforts here over the years...I will probably want to talk to you on
email a bit more about these efforts if that is okay with you.

Hi again,

as I promised I added several photos of demantoids at MinDat.
All them are listed here:
http://www.mindat.org/user-5160.html#2_0_0_0_0__
If whenever you need our photos remember that we are not on CopyRights! We base on CreativeCommons - non-comercial use is free and you can do it without asking for permission. So - use them!

Best regards
Tom

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"Spirifer" Geological Society