Howdy there,

Thanks for checking out my Mindat page. Hopefully soon I will have some more nice pictures up here and make this page look a little better.

I'm a Tucson native, the son of a son of an Arizonan, and Arizona minerals are my favorite to collect. I am particularly interested in rare, small metallic xtls - copper-leads like caledonite, diaboleite, murdochite, and rarer ones if I can get them:) also copper secondaries like cuprite, azurite, and any AZ type locality species. My favorite mine is the Mammoth-St. Anthony mine at Tiger, and Bisbee, Grand Reef, Rowley, the Grandview, and other AZ mines all are of great interest. I have some nice stuff from other areas, like Tsumeb, so if anyone would like to trade me your nice AZ pieces I might have something that you want!

I'm striving to learn microscopy for crystal ID and photography as well. I have a cheap but effective 7x-112.5x zoom microscope that I just got in Augusut, 2009. When I am not in school or doing homework, as I'm preparing to undertake a major in mining engineering mineralogy, I'm studying minerals under the scope and in the literature! My favorite mineral book is Mineralogy of Arizona, and of course my favorite website is mindat.org!

Write me a note if you want to talk about AZ minerals! I'm relatively inexperienced compared to a lot of people, but my enthusiasm I hope more than makes up for that. Take care and thanks for visiting!

Ben Kirchner