Some short notes on my mineralogical curriculum vitae.
I was born 1964 and started collecting minerals 1976. My first experiences were very impressive to me. We were a group of 3 friends who went underground in many different, long abandoned mines in Austria almost every weekend, resulting in a large collection within few years.

After some fascinating years I realized that I must be more specific in my hobby. I bought a stereo microscope, a simple Euromex from the first money I earned. Funny fact -I still use it for quick overviews over fresh cut material. I also started with precise documentation of my collection and trips.

From 1983-86 I attended the Mining University of Leoben, Styria, but changed to chemistry afterwards. I`m still very thankful for my working duty during that time in the lead mine of Bad Bleiberg, Carinthia, (was still active then!) which was a very impressive experience for me.

Fascinated from micromounts I began swapping a lot with collectors all over the world. Just a few years ago I quit with those systematics due to 2 reasons. It costed too much time which I need for preparing new material (cutting, put into boxes, labeling, ...); I got the feeling that approx. 30-50% of my swapped material wasn`t labeled correctly.
Nowadays I don`t have many specimen which have an origin outside of Austria.

My collecting method nowadays is very specific and organized. I`m interested in unknown places in Austria; places that haven`t been researched in a micromount scientific way (we have hundreds of those here in Austria), mainly historic (long forgotten) mines, especially with Pb/Zn/Au/Cu/Fe parageneses. I prefer a systematical collection from such places, I`m NOT interested in the best or the most! Thanks to my friend Dr.Franz Bernhard, Graz, who analyses many of my unknown species I`m sure that most of my about 10.000 micromounts are labeled correctly.

In 2004 I bought a better stereomicroscope, a Wild M8 with plan optics. Just recently I`ve added a Wild M420 foto macroscope with apozoom lense to make good pictures of my micromounts.

I`m more than thankful to my wife Eve that she accepts my maniac hobby :-)