Hello, my name is Scott Sadlocha, and welcome to my Mindat home page! I am relatively new to serious collecting, doing so only since October, 2008. When I was a kid, I liked to collect rocks, though I knew very little about them outside of the basics taught in school. I just grabbed rocks that I found interesting, and took them home to study a bit. Since I grew up in the city, I really didn’t have many opportunities to collect, and usually constrained myself to looking for samples on camping trips in the woods of my home state, Michigan, and summertime visits to my grandfather’s cottage in Ontario, Canada. Occasionally, other chances to collect something would come up, but these were few and far between. I remember one summer day visiting a gas and service station owned by a friend of my father. Next door was a small cemetery headstone company, with a small pile of raw stone sitting in the back of its yard, up against the fence. I remember reaching my small hand through a hole in the fence to grab small pieces that had broken off the larger chunks lying around. After that day, I volunteered to go with him to the station any time he wanted to visit his friend.

I knew of no one that collected, and had no one to encourage me a bit, so I never progressed very far, especially since this was over 30 years ago, and I didn’t have the benefits of a computer, while any other resources were limited. As I got a bit older, my life got quite a bit more serious, and took a turn towards dire when I was thirteen years old. After this time, everything in life was complicated and busy, and my interests fell by the wayside.

Then, I grew older, and things seemed to get even busier as life got in the way. I finished high school, joined the military (and visited some very interesting places, though it is too bad I wasn’t collecting at the time), finished my time in the military and got out, met my beautiful wife, got married, had kids, finished my college degree and moved into the information technology field, bought a house a couple times over, and dealt with all of the details that life tends to throw at you, including a few that were quite unexpected.

In recent years, I had been looking for something to devote a little free time to, though I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I wanted a hobby, but couldn’t settle on something. Initially, I thought it might be something to do with technology, but I found that I did it so much for a living, that I wanted something different for an escape. Looking back, had I been a geologist or mineralogist, I might have thought differently! I also thought of astronomy or history, both areas of great interest to me, but after some thought, I believed them to not be tactile enough. I wanted to do something where I could work with my hands, look at something up close and study it. I love working around my house, and I do pretty much everything around here myself. I enjoy working with wood and stone, and find it a calming experience. I was looking for something along those lines for a hobby.

In October of 2008, my daughter, 11 at the time, asked me to go to the Michigan Mineralogical Society Mineral Show, held at a college auditorium near my home. I accepted her offer, not sure of what to expect, but always happy to spend some time with her. I hadn’t looked at much with regards to rocks and minerals in many years, though I guess I should have seen the potential passion or obsession coming. We would buy small minerals and pouches of tumbled rocks (the kind you see at many kiosks at touristy locations) on vacations and family trips through the years, and we enjoyed going through them trying to figure out what was what, though our knowledge was rudimentary. I also have an interest in online role-playing games, and looking back, always seemed to play a classical Tolkienesque dwarven type of character, with a love of earth and rock and a prospector or geology related profession. I guess my online avatar mirrored my actual interest, though it took me a while to put it all together.

We arrived at the mineral show, my first ever, and I walked through the doors, and became hooked almost immediately. This show was my catalyst, the event that pushed me towards what I wanted to do but hadn’t been able to figure out yet. As I walked around the show, I couldn’t believe all of the minerals I was seeing. I never knew that one could collect minerals of such a caliber, and was in awe throughout my wandering. Though the Detroit show, as it seems to be regularly called, is relatively small compared to other shows, to me it was huge, and I found myself overwhelmed by the tables and tables of minerals that were presented. We spent the day looking through all of the minerals and I went home knowing what I wanted to do.

After that day, it seemed like it was full steam ahead with the hobby. I tried to learn all that I could, as quickly as possible. I checked some books out of my library, and also scoured bookstores and Amazon for books that could help me. I also used the internet as a resource, though I did not sign on to Mindat right away. Initially, I stuck to print media because I could read nearly anywhere, and I just enjoy reading books. I figured I needed to get the basics down quickly, so that everything else could follow. I recall the first time I stumbled across Mindat, and found it quite overwhelming, and I couldn’t believe the amount of information contained within the site. I started going through site after site, looking minerals up, reading field reports, anything I could find. I also emailed a few people I found referenced online, pestering them with questions, and getting gracious responses from all of them. I also looked to eBay, a site I am quite familiar with, and bought a few mineral samples, so that I could have a few things in-hand to look over. At the time of my first purchase, I knew next to nothing, and bought what looked good. I had no idea of the importance of locality, and knew nothing of the frauds and fakes out there. Luckily, in my few completely uneducated purchases, I did not buy any minerals that were misrepresented or incorrect. At most, the locality information was not the most thorough or the samples were very basic. But I was happy just to have something, and it was a learning experience.

As the winter months went by, I was surprised at how much I was learning, and how enjoyable it was while learning. I have always considered myself a quick learner, but it just felt natural and I seemed to pick up quicker than I thought I would. I think the level of enthusiasm I had played a large part in it all. Also, throughout this time, my daughter was at my side, learning with me and helping me along with her own enthusiasm. I looked up local resources and attended a few smaller area shows, buying a few small samples here and there, slightly more educated now, and talked to everyone I could at the shows, all the while continuing the use the internet more and more.

I got very lucky in early spring, when a neighbor came over to visit and noted my interest in minerals. She told me that her husband’s uncle was a collector, and said she would introduce me to him. Several days later, she provided his number, noting that she had called him, and he asked that I call him to talk minerals. I gave him a call, and spent quite a while just talking and learning. I was amazed at the amount of knowledge and experience he had, and was willing to share. This was my first conversation with Bob Frost, a man who has been collecting longer than I have been alive. I corresponded with him quite a few more times, both via phone and email, and even visited him at his home on several occasions. On my first visit to his home, I was amazed. I could not believe that a person could have so many minerals in a personal collection. He explained the basics of many areas to me, from field collecting to micromounting to lapidary, noting that I would find an area that I preferred in time. He told me that I as grew in the hobby, he could tell me much more, but didn’t want to overwhelm me on my first visit to him. That was nearly impossible though, with everything that I was seeing and hearing! Bob continues to be an inspiration to me, and I bother him with questions quite often, hopefully not too often.

Around that time is when I started to use Mindat extensively, as I found myself becoming more and more comfortable with it. As time went by, my knowledge seemed to coalesce, with bits of information coming from nearly everywhere. I started grabbing rocks just about everywhere I went, just to study them and learn more about the underlying geology. I planned small trips to local areas, none notable for minerals, but at least rocks. I have even been on a few true field trips, and have a few self collected samples to show for it, something I find extremely exciting (I will try to provide write-ups on some of my trips and activities in separate articles). I also joined two mineral clubs, something that was universally recommended, and has proved immensely beneficial. All the while, I have been enjoying every minute of it. One thing I have noticed about the mineral community, since the moment I started, is the friendliness, graciousness, and kindness of the people involved. That is something I had not expected, but was genuinely pleased to find, and I have had many fantastic and memorable conversations with collectors and enthusiasts throughout my time collecting.

In October, 2009, I returned to the Michigan Mineral Show with my daughter, and was amazed at how much I had learned in a year. I could now walk around the show while knowing quite a bit about what was presented and, as a result, could enjoy myself much more. However, after some time spent on the show floor, I realized I still had a long way to go, which is one aspect of the hobby that makes it so interesting to me. I know that decades from now, I will still be learning something great about minerals, and I am looking forward to that time, as well as all the time in between.

Thanks for visiting…