Field CollectingHow do you display or store your specimens
I could not find a suitable page to post this on, but it is about collecting minerals, well more so to do with what you do with your minerals after they have been collected. I have always wanted to display my minerals arranged in their chemical groups like silicates, carbonates etc. but it can be annoying when I acquire a new specimen i have to move each mineral along to fit the new one, that would mean having to reorganise them all the time.
I am now thinking of a different strategy, as i do not think my specimens are really display specimens, I might not have them on display but rather stored in some kind of order, the display boxes stack up nicely so i could just have them all stacked up, they would still be on display in my cabinet but not laid out so you can see each one it would be just rows and rows of stacked boxes!
But I still would like to have them in some kind of order, maybe alphabetical would help me locate each specimen easier, or i could use the MinID system and have them stored the same as they are shown on my catalogue.
I'm interested to see how others show there minerals of, or if they are just kept as reference specimens in draws or shelves.
JASON:
Sounds more like you will have a beautiful display of boxes!!
Those of us who collect minerals usually place them in lighted cabinets so that we can show them. Mine are in one four foot case with four shelves and one thirteen foot case with four shelves each. What is nice, I can arrange in various ways.
I would diplay your collection in a dust free environment, lighted and maybe behind locked glass doors- deters the handling if you choose not to allow someone to touch.
Regards
KC
I like to display some specimens in my office. The minerals on display change as I acquire new examples or as I decide to group types.
Dust is a problem, but none of these are bothered by a quick rinse in tap water as needed. None of them are particularly valuable, and I don't have any that are specially fragile.Jason,
Welcome to the eternal problem.
If there was a best way, all would be doing just that, and everyone would learn that way early on in this 'hobby'.
I want everything I have to be displayed, but like everyone, I've run out of space. Before I ran out of space, I had gaps. And yes, with every purchase or collected piece, there is the rearranging, unless you set everything chronologically to the date you acquired it. But that doesn't look scientific or educational. But I've found that so few people grasp what they are looking at anyway, does that matter? Labels are a very important part of presentation so that has to be factored in. You'll probably have some shelves you'll be happier with than others. That is the compromise I've reached.
Hope this helps.
Mike 
Space, that's always the problem... Unless you collect micros :-) I do a little of all.
Hi Jason,
As mentioned above, space is an ongoing issue, I don't have the luxury of sufficient space for big display cases.
The bulk of my current collection is housed in these: Bisley 15 drawer
Using the cardboard specimen trays available from several sources, each drawer can hold 21 of the 3 inch by 2 inch trays or combinations of 2"x2", 3"x3" and 4"x3". Height of each specimen is a little restricted, but for the larger specimens these deeper 9 drawer cabinet work well: Bisley 9 drawer
Each drawer can hold 9 of the 4"x3" trays and 3 3"x2" and are good for quite tall pieces.
These cabinets don't have a big footprint and I stack two of them on on top of the other - two lots of the 15 drawers (or 9 drawers) tall is quite high enough for me!
Where possible I have arranged drawers by geographic area or mine (where I have multiples from one locality), given that I specialise in Cornwall and Devon tin / tungsten mineralisation this system works well, it is simple enough to number the drawers and catalogue specimens in each drawer so finding pieces isn't a major issue even with a lot of drawers.
I also have an antique glass fronted cabinet for really large bits.
Another handy way of storing specimens was brought to my attention recently using these clip top stacking plastic boxes: Really Useful Box 4 litre
They come in a variety of sizes and are pretty sturdy. How to display resp. store your specimens dependes on what kind o collector you are. If you are a systematic collector you will have some attraktive specimens which you will show in a showcase. However, the most of your specimens may be are very rare or interesting but not presentable without a Bino-microscope. These specimens you may store in drawers of a closed cabinet.
I go this way. I have two showcases but abt. 80% of my specimens are stored in drawers as you may see at the enclosed pics.
Rgds.
Uwe Ludwig
Peter, your rock room ("cave") is one of the best organized I have ever seen - a model for the rest of us!
Since I collect minerals from a few specific geographic areas, I arrange them by country or region within a country. This is not ideal when you're trying to find a certain specimen among many, and there is a constant attempt to upgrade, so things get rearranged and moved around. But it looks nice to see the specimens grouped that way and adds to their historical/geological interest. 
Thanks for all the replies it is interesting to see the different ways people keep their specimens and that space, or lack of, is a common problem we all encounter! most of my specimens are kept in plastic display boxes which are about 4.5 x 3 x 3cm , a few are in less deep boxes and some in wider boxes. Keeping them in the display boxes does help with the dust problem.
I actually gained a display cabinet with glass doors, yesterday, that is what prompted me to post this topic! Someone had decided to get rid of one and put it in the bin store, I thought it was broken as one of the doors was removed but i was able to reattach it, a shelf is missing but it would be easy enough to make another one and there is a round stain on the top where someone has rested a cup of tea or coffee, that is all i could see wrong with it, so it's mine now! It's not to great for display though as it has a lot of frosted glass areas, there are windows of clear glass, but for display I would prefer clear glass all around, but for mineral storage it's ideal.
My other cabinet I might use for displaying larger more showy prices that dont fit in display boxes, that one does at least have clear doors, and also space to add a few more shelves. I would like to add some lights to it however I think I would find that difficult, I am wondering how it would look if I just added a few LED lights that can be stuck on, although I do notice they give a blueish cast which isn't that great.
I like the idea of storing/displaying the specimens based on locality, I am building up a good collection of UK minerals, in fact since the end of 2013 i have added 29 new minerals, and 27 of them are from the UK! and I already have a large list of more UK specimens.
I still would like to have them in groups based on the elements they contain though, I think I will try to arrange them in those groups and in alphabetical order. 
...Someone says that I'm living in a catacomb. Why? Simply because my collection is not displayed...This is not due to jealousy or possessiveness, but mainly to space reasons (incredible, isn't it?). When I started to collect rocks (I was a child), samples were few and they were displayed in a small glass cabinet; now I have five lockers full of boxes and containers of various tipology and dimensions that I choose and bought on the basis of the robustness and the modularity. Some other samples are but displayed on some furnitures, but these are only "unpretentious" minerals, i.e. quartz, calcite, semiprecious stones and so on.
I know, it's a true sin to hide the collection, but I console myself thinking that all the samples are stored in safety and protected from dust and light (realgar thanks heartily). Radioactive samples are stored separately in another room.
Everything all right? By no means...I also love music and reading, so hundreds of books, three keyboards with expanders, about 2500 CD and stereo plant claims their spaces, but this is a different problem... There are many good replies above.
For me, it has gotten easier. I was mainly a field collector, rarely buying minerals or even trading for them. All of my acquired (purchased or traded for) pieces are in one cabinet, and don't fill it up. The rest of my pieces I arrange however I see fit, mainly with aesthetics in mind. I don't care about arranging by region or chemical class. What does work is to have groups of similar minerals together - say five or six in a group, for comparison. If I put together more I start to loose the larger aesthetic qualities I want in every shelf. So every shelf has a good variety of colors and species. I don't really field collect any more, an still don't buy or trade, so my collection is pretty static. My display space is pretty static at about five cabinets, and that works out fine.
I also don't keep many pieces in storage. If it can't be displayed I don't really care about it much. (Obvioulsy I am not a micromounter!) I am in the process of going through what I do have stored, but that is because I have moved and am just to the point of getting everything out of boxes. If it is below my standard for what I want to display, I'm setting it aside for sale.
I do have 150-200 thmbnails in a set of drawers alongside my cabinets. That's as close as I'll come to a non-displayed collection.
Most people, even geologists, that come and look at it don't look very closely, so organization is for my enjoyment, and that means aesthetics, comparison groupings, or the good memories I have of collectibg them, are the most important factors.
I am also in the process of cataloging all the pieces, which at this point just means getting a catalog number on it and getting it enetered in my spreadsheet. I haven't started making display labels, since getting the catalog entry takes precedence. Once I am through the sorting and cataloging I will make display labels. At that point I can enforce a discipline that nothing gets to be displayed without cataloging and a display label. 
Hello Keith
Stillwater must have been a big disappointment. LOL. If you have any of those non-display samples from there you want to get rid of send them to me.;-) There are tradeoffs between storage and display, most notably efficient use of space, protection from dust and damage, and security on one hand vs. accessibility and visibility on the other. I live in a small apartment where expansive display is not an option. I incorporate a changing selection of specimens into displays at my club's annual show once a year and on other rare occasions, but they spend the rest of the time out of sight in their cabinets.
My thumbnail specimens, mounted in Perky boxes, live in an antique oak office cabinet with shallow drawers (for photos?) that I inherited, and larger specimens live in white cardboard fold-up boxes/trays in three steel filing cabinets with shallow (6-8", 15-20 cm) drawers that I was fortunate to purchase second-hand at various times. For reasons that surely made sense at one time, the thumbnails are arranged in Dana order and the larger ones are alphabetical.
Any storage or display arrangement needs to have flexibility built in for insertion of new specimens and removal of superseded ones unless they are arranged strictly in chronological order of acquisition. That flexibility is worth the informality and loss of organizational rigor it requires. Standardizing to one size of box or container (except for micros and TNs) is not practical, since specimen sizes vary so much. I keep four or five sizes of fold-ups on hand and use others that come with purchased specimens, the goal being to store specimens as compactly as possible while still protecting the specimens from one another.
The bottom line: don't get hung up on a "plan" at the outset and end up stuck with something rigid and unsatisfactory; try some things, observe what works (and doesn't work) for others, and see what evolves to meet your own needs.
Large specimen cabinet to left and smaller specimens (in 4x3, 3x3 and 3x2 card trays) in the drawers to right.
Miscellaneous specimens stored in a 'Really Useful Box' with a further file drawer cabinet behind for thumbnails kept in 2x2 card trays and large flat specimens that just don't fit anywhere else.
There are a few other specimens displayed around the room where there is space for them.
How you display your specimens will depend on the kind of specimens you collect trade or buy, and how many of them you have and what your capacity and that of your wife may be to tolerate clutter. If you are a died in the wool collector, soon your collection will grow to the point that it is not practical or possible to display all the items and at that point you will start using cabinets with drawers or boxes to house your collection while keeping some of the prettiest ones in display cases. The ratio of drawers and boxes to display cabinets will vary according to the taste of the collector.
You already have apparently reached the state where you are trying to impose a system on you collection so that you can find the specimen you are looking for when you want it. Collections can be organized in various ways. Dana order, Strunz order, alphabetically by species, alphabetically by country. These are just a few of them.
When I was collecting rare species, I arranged them in boxes (the standard flats that mineral dealers use) alphabetically by species. With in the flats, which could be of various heights 1.5, 2, 3, 4 or even 6 inches high, I used the standard paste board fold up boxes for each specimen. These fold up boxes can also be off various sizes. On an 18x36 inch shelf, three of the standard flats can fit next to each other and depending on the height between shelves you can stack flats on top of one another. You will find that you do not want to fill the flats to capacity, because if you need to add a specimen or two to the flat, there will be no room to place it unless you start moving specimens around between flats. Leave the flats half full approximately and this will make it much easier to allow for expansion. On the ends of the boxes I would write what the content of the box was, so that I could quickly find the species I was looking for. You will probably find that using standard flats and shelving units with five shelves of 18x36 inch shelfs is about the most space saving way to store your specimens consistent with quick access and specimens retrieveability.
For micros, I also arrange them alphabetically by species and within the species, alphabetically by country, state, county etc. But I leave the drawers about half full so that I can accommodate new additions without having to start shifting things around between drawers. But of course you can arrange them any way you want, but you will find you will need to leave extra space in the drawers to allow for new additions.
I keep a few of the pretty things on display but arrange the bulk of them in drawers and flats segregated by country. I find that a convenient way to find specimens from a particular country. You, on the other hand may want to keep all of your azurite or dioptase specimens together in one place rather than go looking for them by the country.
Soon, if you continue, you will find that the value of your collection will be greater than the value of the car you use and may even exceed the value of the house you are living in. At that time you will probably want to give some consideration to the security arrangements of your storage location to protect you from a huge financial hit should your specimens be stolen, damaged or destroyed. You may also want to catalog your specimens and make labels for them. Many people never do this, and of course it is a shame for various reasons. If they die, their survivors will have no idea of how much they paid for the specimens, and if they are not labeled, some or many of them will end up in the dump because none of their survivors will want to spend the time to find out what the specimen is. The stories about what happens to old collections are many and instructive and are the stuff of stories that collectors talk about wistfully. 
I very quickly resorted to thumbnails and micromounts because storage had become a problem. Having got a display case and already filling it up with my display specimens I found it hard to debate which is displayale by quality or not. With micromounting, none of this really comes across a problem for me :-)
I have two mineral collections - one collection is used primarily for display, one is for hands on teaching.
Any delicate minerals will go into the display cases, under glass. The display cases have 2x4 constructed bases which hold the cardboard flats of teaching minerals.
I think it is best to keep similar minerals together but in practice I am always pulling from the display cabinet to put together an education display and, the most delicate specimens have priority for cabinet protection. So, when a new delicate specimen arrives, sturdier display specimens will get the box treatment until I can clean out the space for a new cabinet. Due to my educational display pulling and new specimen acquisitions, my display cabinets currently have very little order to them.
I think Rock Currier makes an important point on cataloging your collection. I am not so much a fan of putting numbers on display specimens but photographs combined with all the specimen information I believe to be one of the most important thing a mineral collector can do. I also believe a print copy of the catalog should be kept along with a computer file copy. When required, your survivors are more likely to find a print copy of a mineral catalog than a file on an old computer.
This will be my first attempt at uploading a photo to mindat - here is an example of my display case. I use this case at home and it is also the one I take to shows. The photo shows one of the educational display I am working on for the May Kalamazoo Rock and Mineral Show held in Michigan. The glass has been removed for the photo.
No one else has admitted to doing this, so here are photos of my mineral storage. The tool cabinets are Craftsman and Kobalt, built with ball-bearing drawers and designed for heavy loads. The open drawer shows oxides. Clearance is somewhat in excess of 4.5 cm for the shallowest drawers. That is adequate for most of my specimens, the majority of which are miniature to small cabinet size. Some drawers are deeper. I also have an antique display cabinet in the great room for about 50 of my showiest specimens. The third photo shows plastic parts containers in which I have stored a group of specimens from a single locality I am studying. A friend for whom we were giving a tour of the house thought it was odd that I was doing mechanic’s work in the living area of the house. I’m glad he mentioned it, because otherwise I would not have thought to say anything about the cabinets’ true purpose, and he would have thought me to be a bit strange (he probably thinks that, anyway!).
I use old map storage cabinets for specimen storage. It is really the best. They are rugged and can store a lot of weight! I lined each drawer with Royal blue felt cloth and lay a "notched grid" of lattice over that. You can use any color that you prefer. The spacing of the notches defines the size of the "compartments" that hold the specimens. See attached photos. If you need to see more details you can pm me.
я также делаю использовать шкафы карту хранения для хранения образцов. Это действительно лучший. Они прочны и могут хранить много веса! Я выстроились каждый ящик с Ярко-синий чувствовал ткань и заложить "зубчатый сетка» решетки по этому поводу. Вы можете использовать любой цвет, который вы предпочитаете. Расстояние между выемками определяет размер "отсеков", которые содержат образцы. См. приложенные фотографии. Если вы хотите увидеть более подробную информацию Вы можете вечера меня.
see scale bar
see scale bar I followed the above posts with great interest. I think how you store and display minerals is a process and always changing. We have friends that have changed what they collect several times over the years. Several times I have heard they wished they had not sold the previous collections.
Our collection is actually about four sub collections. We do have about 5 display cabinets. Living in Arizona dust is a major problem and we found our favorite display cabinet with a sliding front glass door and great dust seals. In fact just ordered our last one that goes into my wife's mineral room. I am fortunate to have a wife that loves minerals as much as I do.
The sub collections are the display specimens, all have labels with them. Second is my reference collection mostly in small perky boxes, which now lives in 9 cabinets with drawers. Those are alphabetical and the method of keeping enough space for new specimens is to have an idea of how many specimens and then have about double the storage drawers and leave spaces between the specimens for new ones. This only means moving a few pieces when space gets a bit tight. I have only had to redo the whole collection when I purchased several new cabinets.
Another sub collection is the larger perky specimens that are not display caliber but need protection from our Arizona dust.
The final sub collection is small 8x11 inch boxes with lids of locality specimens that are self collected and labeled on the front.
It is not an ideal system but I think each is personal to the collector.
In most cases this works for me but it has happened a number of times we talk about a certain specimen and I go on the hunt. "I know exactly where it is" and about 20 minutes later I still have not found it. Luckily that is not the norm.
My wife and I each have separate mineral rooms we decorate the way we like. I am the micro and thumbnail collector, she the display piece collector. We both share each others minerals and it is all "our" collection, great since we get along. Not ideal if we didn't.
My method of storing the collection has gone through three major changes as it grew and I know most will go through this. I have been happy with our method now for several years. All our specimens are labeled and a note on each label to see the file when old labels were too large for the drawers. I know changes will come down the road again but for now it works. Allow me to pipe up for a second time to echo Rock's advice to affix a locality label--which he has called a "lifesaver" label--to each specimen. We all know the frustration of looking through an old unlabeled rockhound hoard that would have been worthwhile specimens if only someone had preserved the all-important locality information with them! Even a conscientiously applied catalog number is useless unless one has the catalog to go with it.
Jerry VanNocker mentioned an aversion to putting numbers on display specimens. But labels don't have to be obtrusive! Nearly every specimen has an obvious bottom or back side where a small label can be applied out of sight. On transparent specimens I have used white or black ink--whichever would be less visible--on a clear nail polish base so the info is present if one looks for it but is nearly invisible to the casual observer.
Labels can be small, too. Here is a snapshot of three miniatures with labels along with a US dime 18 mm in diameter for scale. Very few specimens will not accommodate a label like these. The printed labels are done in 5-point type on plain paper, affixed with white glue, and covered when dry with clear nail polish. (I haven't tested it, but if the matrix is sound they should survive an ultrasonic cleaning.) Info can be abbreviated as long as it remains unambiguous to a knowledgeable person--what else could "Ich., Jpn." on the base of a stibnite miniature mean?
Rolf,
Thanks for the excellent discussion. I live in Wyoming and have the same trouble with dust. I have several different cabinets and a database helps me keep track of their whereabouts. I keep track of my collection by posting the specimen number, geographic & mineralogic information and lastly the location of where it is by drawer or cabinet. See the picture of my database. Is there anyone else that keeps track of their collection in a database? I am curious what fields another collector uses. The same can be done in excel as well.
Thanks,
Greg Kruse
Here are three photos of my mineral room. The cabinets we have with drawers are from a couple of places. First one where I am standing are made by the Amis and are wonderful cabinets but getting them was months of waiting. The white boxes are the self collected mine minerals from around the world. The microscope set-up is what I use to do all my micro photos.
Second photo shows the system I use to put compartments in the drawers. Material I use is matt board bought in large single sheets and cut to size with an exacto knife and the slots I cut with my band saw. Keeps each specimen in its place. The cabinets came with Masonite dividers but those are too thick and took up too much room.
The last photo is of the other cabinets. One on the left is hand made by an old friend who was moving and sold me two cabinets for $80 because they had been smoke damaged in a garage fire. They were still completely full of lapidary slabs from all over, worth more than the cabinets.
The cabinets of drawers on the right are stackable and are made for rubber stamps but are perfect for minerals.
Hope this helps a bit.
Greg and Rolf,
Thanks for the tips on making dividers. I've recently acquired a couple flat file cabinets for storing minerals and was thinking dividers would be nice. Long term storage of specimens in such a way to keep therm some what free of dust and dirt pretty much means that you will need to keep them in boxes so that the dust can settle on the top of the box. That's why I suggested the use of flats with lids that fit down over the bottoms. Even if you keep your specimens in drawers or display cases with dust seals, the dust will most likely still get in. I keep my micros in specially made wooden cabinets in drawers, but even then, after a few years I noticed that dust was starting to accumulate on the top of the plastic boxes I kept my micros in. To see clearly into the box through the transparent lid, I had to wipe away the dust. I then put cut to size thin covers of Formica that would lay flat on the tops of the micro boxes. Most of the dust gathers on top of the Formica and the amount of dust that gathers on the tops of the micro boxes is much less. Dick Bideaux for a number of years, had a running battle with dust in his mineral room and never succeeded completely in eliminating it. He had to seal up all the windows in the room and make sure that there was no air circulating in the room from heating and air conditioning and to go to considerable lengths to make the door air tight. In practical terms, just resign yourself that your specimens will get dirty and that eventually you or the dealer that passes them on to new generations of collectors will have to clean them. You can minimize however the amount of dust and grime that will in the long term coat them. I don't think that I have ever seen an old collectionof minerals that didn't need cleaning.
