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GeneralHumorous mineral stories

22nd Jan 2017 14:09 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This morning a couple of funny stories came to mind and I thought others out there might have some to add that will bring about a chuckle or two. Names will be withheld to protect the guilty.

The first one concerns a fellow who came to me one time and was all excited because he had just purchased a specimen from "The North Pole". I had to laugh and he was not pleased at my laugh but I explained to him that it was not from the actual North Pole but from near North Pole Alaska, a town where there was mining and his galena specimen came from there. Luckily he didn't pay much but he sure was disappointed.

The second story was a question I was asked if I knew the locality of a specimen, the label said only it "may be from Michigan". Again I had to laugh and told the fellow that the specimen had all the proper information and was from Maybee, Michigan, an actual place.

I was hoping some other stories may lighten ones day mood a bit.

Rolf

22nd Jan 2017 14:17 UTCCooper Jones

Humorous is spelled wrong... ;-)

22nd Jan 2017 15:39 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

"Humorous is spelled wrong." Only if you write American English. But English English is my favourite.;-)

22nd Jan 2017 15:56 UTCFred E. Davis

Oh, by "humerous" I thought you were referring to the "funny bone" in the arm...

22nd Jan 2017 16:04 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

That was intentional and my little attempt at humor!

Glad you are having fun with that one too.

Rolf

22nd Jan 2017 16:06 UTCTony Albini

I can recall some funny stories also. My mentor went collecting at the Gillette Quarry in Haddam Neck, CT with a friend of his. The friend said "Today I am going to find a topaz crystal". The first rock he broke in half had the best topaz inside to come from this site. No other topazes were found that day!

Other story again with my mentor involved. He showed me a specimen and said "I remember the day I collected this specimen, I was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch". I told him, but Dick, you eat peanut and jelly sandwiches every day!

One day I went collecting at an old iron mine where siderite was the ore. After digging all morning and finding only cleavage pieces and no actual pocket crystals, I sat down for lunch. Looking at the dump, I saw a siderite crystal lying on the surface and this was my best specimen of the day.

Minerals are where you find them and you cannot always predict where you will find your treasure of the day.

22nd Jan 2017 17:38 UTCUwe Ludwig

Nice stories about mineral names, LOL. Just I checked it and there are 16 locations with the name North Pole worldwide.

Rgds.

Uwe Ludwig

22nd Jan 2017 18:11 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

Many years ago, my husband and I spent a day collecting at Ruggles Mine in New Hampshire. Toward the back of the quarry, I found a large rock made of loosely interlocking almandine crystals. John broke it into smaller pieces, all of which showed good, large crystal faces. While breaking up the rock for specimens, a piece rolled down the slope into a large puddle, and we left it. A few years later, I burst out laughing when I saw this specimen on Mindat:

https://www.mindat.org/photo-144675.html - it was the piece from the pond, and we were glad someone else was enjoying it! Do read the caption.

22nd Jan 2017 18:27 UTCMilton Dye

Many years ago a geology professor that I knew took a Geology 101 class to a large road-cut to look for graptolites.As he and the students were walking a large rat began running near the cut.Without thinking the professor threw his Estwing rock hammer at the rat with the point striking him in the back of the head.Of course the rat was killed instantly and the professor told the class,"when you get to be a real geologist you can do that also!" he told me that they actually believed him!

22nd Jan 2017 19:58 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Great stories, just what I was hoping people would share and brings tears to my eyes.

Becky,

I know that story. When I was underground in Bisbee I found a place the friend geologist Richard Graeme had been collecting with his sons because laid out on a boulder by one of the broken up calcite caverns by an ore body, lay a collection of curved calcite crystals that Richard and probably his sons, had been collecting. I said a silent "thank you" to Richard and collected them. The same kinds of curved calcite crystals ended up pictured in Min. Record issue on Bisbee. I guess he left the ones he didn't want to take and I was very happy.

Milton,

On collecting trips I did a little of what you said the professor did with getting kids to believe almost anything. At a site were nice, rounded jack rabbit droppings. I exclaimed to the kids "Ah, desert candy" and pretended to pick some up and toss them into my mouth, not thinking how fast kids were. One of the boys picked one up so quick I didn't even have time to say anything and was merrily chewing on it as I told the kids "just kidding, they are rabbit poop". I did feel a bit bad about that one but learned that kids will believe anything so I was more careful at later times not to do that. I guess that ran in the family because my brother in law used to call them "smart pills" but he said nobody he tried it on ever actually put one in their mouth.

22nd Jan 2017 20:27 UTCGregg Little 🌟

Not quite a mineral story but geological. During a large youth science fair event I was a tour leader on a field trip excursion in the Rockies. On the return part of the trip after many probably dull stops (most students were not earth science inclined) for mountain tectonics and depositional sequences, I decided to lighten the mood. I pointed out the numerous hill side tracks in the grass by the highway and attributed their origin to the extinct Side Hill Gouger beast which had one set of legs shorter than the other and roamed in huge numbers hundreds of years ago.

I further said that there were two sub species divided by which side the shorter legs were on, hence having grazed one way or the other on the hill sides. Going further, I elaborated that the beasts rapidly went extinct when pioneers arrived as they were easily hunted by standing in front of them and, when they turned to flee, the shorter legs cause them to tumble down the hill to their deaths. It took about 2 or 3 minutes of silence before the skeptical questions started coming!

22nd Jan 2017 21:46 UTCJean-Yves Lamoureux

Last spring, at my first field trip of the season, I went to a quarry in southwestern Quebec, to hurt some innocent lil' rocks, as usual.

I knew of a promising ledge in this very fractured limestone, and thus worked with a small bar, wiggling loose rocks to create a "controlled" rock slide, but what I didn't expect is that it would give away so fast, and with a higher volume than expected !

I straightened up hastily to avoid hurting myself, but this abrupt movement made my eyeglasses fall in the moving rubble, and one can easily guess I shivered as I watched in a blur (mine is a severe case of myopia !) this avalanche of some 5 or 6 cubic feet of rubble go down the 45 degrees slope !

Carefully, I went down and tried to locate my probably-broken glasses downhill and then on the top of the pile, but couldn't see well enough. I had no other choice than going back to my car to pick my extra pair, an anguished walk of some forty minutes walk back and forth...

Now able to see, I came back and slowly started to remove rubble, expecting to find shards of glass and an out-of-shape frame, as one can expect.

About 30 minutes later, removing a flat piece of rock, I finally found my eyeglasses, and got quite a surprise : absolutely no damage, which was simply unbelievable, but hey, I'm writing this with the said optics !

:)-D

22nd Jan 2017 22:56 UTCMilton Dye

Back in the 60's,the 1960's, I spent some time collecting many very nice fossils in an area of Alabama that was very secluded.This was just before I shipped out to South Korea.The day before I flew to Korea I visited the site and noticed a slab of limestone in a large flat area.This slab was about 3 feet thick and had a rough diameter of about 8 feet.On the exposed surface near the middle was a beautiful curved complete nautiloid standing out in relief that was some 8 inches long and it was beautiful! I began chiseling a trench around it to remove it but try as I did the cold and darkness drove me home after I had worked on the specimen for 3 hours.The next day I left for Korea and was gone 18 months.When I returned home I went back to the site and the large rock was gone!

I looked around a while and noticed a pile of material a dozer had pushed into the woods,about 100 yards from where I had last seen the slab.Out of curiosity I walked into the woods and there was the slab still face up with the nautiloid still attached! I climbed onto the slab took my hammer and chisel,hit the trench edge I had chiseled out just one time and the entire specimen popped out on a nice display slab. I could hardly believe my eyes!

22nd Jan 2017 23:33 UTCTony Albini

Getting back to the funny comments on spelling of words in the US and UK, I remember in the movie Patton where George C. Scott is addressing a UK rally during World War II and says that the UK and US are two countries separated by a common language!

22nd Jan 2017 23:34 UTCEugene & Sharon Cisneros Expert

This happened about 50 years ago, when I was young enough that I knew everything. As best as I can remember, this is how it went.

I was diligently digging out nice epidotes out of the bottom of my 4' deep excavation, while our friend John dug a dozen yards away in his crater. The epidotes were so good that I focused intently on carefully removing them from the jumble of crude quartz crystals. John yelled over to me "finding anything". Not wanting to divulge my treasures immediately, I yelled " just a few really crude quartz crystals like this" and I threw one over to him. His acknowledgement was "If you don't want them, throw them over here" and I did.

Later, after a day of hard digging, I gloatingly showed John my prize epidotes and asked him if he had found any as good. He replied, "no, but I got a lot of great scheelite crystals and I didn't even have to dig them".

Cheers,

Gene

22nd Jan 2017 23:52 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This one happened a couple of years ago. A friend was learning to collect minerals and I was helping him with identifications and one day he had gone home and emailed me about a nice blue, translucent mineral he found in a copper mine tunnel. I called him to tell him not to lick it since he had a habit of licking things to get them wet to see them in a different way. Too late, he had spent ten minutes washing out his mouth. He had licked a chalcanthite and it was quite awful to lick.

The actual story here is about a different day he came over with some specimens to have me identify. One he said he had broken from the top of a big rock at a mine. It was a crystalline brown material. I put it under the microscope and immediately knew what it was. The top of a big rock out in the open at a mine told me what it was, a biological. I asked him if he had licked this one and he said no since he had learned his lesson from the chalcanthite. I told him what he had found was a nice marking stone the coyotes used to mark their territory and the build up was of their daily marking the rock and it was dry pee. He was very happy he didn't lick that rock.

I think I had told of this one somewhere else but it fits well here.

23rd Jan 2017 00:24 UTCDana Slaughter 🌟 Expert

One of my favorite places to collect when I lived in MI was the Stoneco quarry at Lime City, OH. I would try to collect there as many Saturdays as possible and never got skunked---good calcite, celestine, fluorite, sphalerite and strontianite specimens were had when the quarry was active.

I was the field trip chairman for our local club and we managed to get a half dozen to fifteen people willing to drive the 3+ hours each way to and from Lime City for each scheduled trip. We always met at the quarry office where we would gather and sign the necessary hold harmless forms and chat with the office crew. One one trip, I was SO excited that we signed the forms and raced down into the quarry in our vehicles. I had been finding wonderful things on the north wall and wanted to get there in a hurry...like yesterday! Away we went...caravan-style.

I led the way and got to my spot and pulled out my collecting gear and went to it as quickly as I could---we only had 4 hours to collect. Someone asked where my wife Brenda was and I realized that I had left her near the quarry office in my haste to begin collecting!!! A fellow member escorted her down and she was a real sport about it---we laugh about it to this day!

23rd Jan 2017 00:37 UTCDana Slaughter 🌟 Expert

Our first club trip to the Rensselaer Stone Company quarry at Pleasant Ridge, IN was met with great optimism---we had a very large turnout and the quarry did not disappoint. I decided to have some fun and took a fine North Vernon, IN calcite from my collection---that had my collection number affixed---with me on the trip.

The RSC was fabulous---they would actually permit collectors to spend the night in the quarry on weekends if they desired and the collecting was great. The rock was very hard but excellent calcite and sulfides were literally everywhere in the numerous pockets honeycombing the host dolostone.

As field trip chairman, I regularly walked around and asked how our members were doing or if I could give some clues to ensure success. At Pleasant Ridge, success was dependent upon how much one wanted to pound---that rock was tough! Anyway, one of our members was working a sulfide and calcite pocket from a ladder he had placed against the wall (can you believe that they allowed the use of ladders!!!) and actually took some time off to eat lunch. He returned to the surface to have his lunch and while away I quietly and quickly sneaked my North Vernon calcite cluster into the back of his pocket. I watched intently when he returned and pulled the pristine cluster, complete with my collection number attached, from the back of the pocket. He was stunned and a bit disappointed to learn it was my piece. I felt badly and felt obliged to surrender the specimen!

23rd Jan 2017 00:42 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Dana,

I know I have rocks in my head but I don't think my wife would have been as forgiving if rocks came ahead of her, sure is nice yours was so forgiving.

We once collected a nearly ton boulder of jasper which I had to split in half as we tried to get it into the vehicle so it is in two thousand pound(approx.) pieces lying by our parking area. When we had our store open we had people from all over come in and if they had enthusiastic children I always gave them a bag to collect and fill up from a big pile by our parking lot. I was there with some European tourists who's kids were busy filling their bags. Just for fun I often told people they could have one of the two jasper pieces if they could lift it to put it into their car. The one little girl set down her collecting bag and came over immediately and told her dad she wanted "that one" and pointed to the larger of the two boulders. Now I have had adults try and move the rocks when their kids said they wanted one but all the could do in the case of strong men was move it back and forth a bit.

The European father had a better answer for his daughter looking up at him hopefully, "dear, it won't fit in your suitcase" and she went back to colleting for her bag.

23rd Jan 2017 00:50 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

I proudly took my brand new, bright UV light up into California's San Bernardino mountains one dark night to hunt for an old scheelite prospect. Found one nice blue-fluorescing rock in the first few minutes, then stumbled over a rock in the dark and smashed my new light. Sadly hiking back to the car with the broken light, I was slightly consoled knowing I had at least found one specimen, now safely wrapped in newspaper in my backpack. The next morning, unwrapping the supposed scheelite in daylight, it turned out to be bird poop. :-(

23rd Jan 2017 03:58 UTCDana Slaughter 🌟 Expert

My wife and I were spending about 10 days in Michigan's UP to collect various rock types, ores and fossils for our Michigan Geology kits that we were putting together for the Teacher Store in Lansing. Three examples each of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks would be accompanied by three ore minerals and three fossils. All of these would be collected in Michigan and neatly numbered and placed in a sturdy plastic box with identification and locality key. I got a ton of compartmented plastic boxes quite cheaply and could sell these to the Teacher Store at a low price so that they could sell them inexpensively to teachers.

I stopped at an outcrop near Humboldt to collect some Goodrich quartzite for our boxes. I noticed a prominent quartz vein with schorl, presumed ferroan dolomite and chalcopyrite and thought to check this out before attacking the hard and ho-hum quartzite. My wife lagged a bit behind and arrived at the outcrop just as I struck my first blow with the sledge on the outcrop. She shrieked and ran back into the van!

When I hit the rock, the whole outcrop came alive. It was teeming with spiders (do they sun themselves?!) and my sledge blow sent them scurrying for cover and the whole rock face seemed to pulsate and come alive. I never noticed them until I hit the outcrop--they seemed to blend in perfectly with the rock. My wife HATES spiders and would not leave the van.

23rd Jan 2017 14:40 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

This story is about fossil collecting, but it’s not just “life with minerals” that can be humorous. One Saturday, several years ago, I went to the field in northern Kentucky with a non-traditional student who was working with me on her senior project. By non-traditional, I mean a cougar. (No, I mean a single lady in her early 50's–almost as old as I was at the time!) We were trying to determine how some Carboniferous marine faunas changed as sea level fluctuated (this has to do with “sequences” caused by rising and falling sea levels–for those of you who are knowledgeable in stratigraphy).

We dug down to several feet of dark gray shale that was full of various invertebrates, especially pelecypods. Shales tend to flake apart when they are removed from the outcrop and dry out, causing the fossils to crumble. We had to coat the shale pieces with their fossil impressions right away or we lose them. We use colorless acrylic paint from a spray can to do that. We were running out of the acrylic. She wasn’t doing well swinging the 4-kg or so pick/sledge hammer combination, so I had her drive back to a hardware store we had passed on the way, to buy some more acrylic as I kept digging.

She got back in good time with several cans, opened one, and coated the fossils that were already sitting on the outcrop and in need of a coating. We took turns digging and painting. I noticed the newly wetted samples were shiny and wet-looking–almost black. After awhile I went to check on some she had coated earlier, to bag and label them. They were still black, even though the paint was nearly dry and not so shiny any more. That puzzled me. Then I checked the can label, and then looked for the cap. I found the BLACK cap for the can. Turns out she was not a handyman, to say nothing of handylady, and didn’t know that the color of the cap is the same as the paint within the can. We had painted our fossils black! Happily, you can still do taxonomy on black fossils.

I NEVER let her forget that. (She was an established professional in her field, and we were contemporaries, so I could get away with teasing her more than some hapless 20-year old student!). But all is well that ends well, as she (with me as co-author, as is the convention with student/advisor teams) won the prize for best student paper at the following joint meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists where we presented our results.

23rd Jan 2017 15:06 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This one happened to me a long time ago in California, back in the 70's.

I wanted to collect low end lepidolite at the Stewart Lithium Mine and went to the owners to ask permission to collect on the dumps. Nothing doing and I was only offered high end material for sale. I tried to explain the material was for sample collections that sold for all of $3 for a collection of 35 specimens, no way I could put in ten dollar specimens in 3 dollar boxes. I left dejected at no success on this trip.

I drove to get gas at the nearest little convenience store and when I went in to pay the fellow behind the counter saw my obvious disappointment. I told him I wanted to go to the mine dump, which was visible from the front window of the store. He laughed and said he was about to make my day. It seems the store was run by Native Americans and the mine was on private land but apparently the dumps were on their land. He said for all of $3 I could go and collect all I wanted. He even gave me exact directions to the dump and told me to be sure and pick some of the oranges hanging over the dirt road because the orchard was not on their land but the road was. Best oranges I have ever had.

On the dump I parked way off to the side by a big manzanita bush. I collected all I wanted and climbed up and down the dump. On the last trip near the top of the dump I found just the boulder I wanted, about 150 pounds of solid lepidolite, loaded with tiny, pink rubellites. The mine owners had offered me a similar boulder for big bucks. Wanting to get this piece to the car I thought of pounding it smaller and carrying several trips to the car. Smart as I was I thought why not just roll the boulder down and then roll it to the car. No way it would ever actually hit the car since it was so far away and so many boulders, trees and more to stop it on the way.

Was I ever wrong. It took off at top speed as soon as I pushed it. To my utter shock it missed every object that could have stopped it or at least slowed it down. Don't think rocks can think but it headed directly toward my vehicle. I sat in frozen shock as I visualized my vehicle trashed by a boulder I had rolled. There was one manzanita bush between my vehicle and the 50mph boulder. The boulder flew into the bush, which shook violently and the boulder bounced straight up into the air and fell with a thud only 15 feet from my vehicle.

I was able to load it easily but it sure showed me that no matter how safe something like that could look, it can easily take a wrong turn. Ended up lucky but it could have been quite different.

I still have a few pieces from that big rock.

23rd Jan 2017 15:47 UTCSean

Okay, my last post that was a retelling of a joke that I heard in Quebec (which is now deleted) was probably a bit too dirty for Mindat. After I posted it, I just remember something that actually did happen (and it's slightly humorous).

My Dad's girlfriend was collecting with us at the Craigmont Mine. If I remembered correctly, she must have slipped, landed on the rocks below her, and ripped her pants really badly. Luckily she didn't get severely scratched but she could've.

Another "embarrassing" experience is when me and her went to the Jeffrey Mine to get on the bus to the mine itself. We were so close to NOT getting in because she was wearing shorts. We would've went from Ottawa to Asbestos for nothing. Luckily, some guy gave her pants to borrow for the day and they, the people hosting the trip, were okay with it. So we got to go after all.

23rd Jan 2017 16:00 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

Thanks all for these great stories!

23rd Jan 2017 16:56 UTCJake Harper Expert

Once, long ago, my wife and I were digging for Quartz crystals in the side of a small bluff. The loose lateritic soils were easy to dig in and the crystals were coming out one by one. I stopped to take a quick break and sat down on the small bluff above my dig spot. Sharp, stinging pains began shooting from my legs and back. It took me all of 10 seconds to realize I had dug into a Fire Ant nest and sat right in it. My wife was very entertained as I gave her a wild strip show right there on the side of the hill.

23rd Jan 2017 17:34 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Jake,

I know that story quite well. I have done a few strips at mines because of things running up my pants. I was lucky in all the cases and never got stung or bitten.

One little fun local one in SE Arizona. We used to bring back a nice "rock" for our cactus garden on our collecting trips. One time to collect red jasper about 15 miles away I told my wife to look for a good piece to put in the cactus garden. As I carried the things we had collected to the car she called out she found the one she wanted.

After I put the things into the vehicle and went up to have a look, rock pick in hand, I saw she had, as usual, found the nicest piece on the whole hill. What showed was a nice red window onto a great piece. I hit it with my pick and with a high pitched tink the pick just bounced off. I knew it was not as small as she had thought. I dug a bit and it just kept getting bigger.

To make the story short, we went home and a few days later took a friend and tools back and after about 3 hours work loaded the ton bolder, after breaking it in half into the vehicle. It sits by the parking lot at our house still.

I am a bit wary now when I ask her to pick a rock to take home remembering that one day.

23rd Jan 2017 17:52 UTCToby Seim

My first time collecting Zeolites, I performed heavy research the day before so I thought that i was well informed of the specimens in the area. The day of collecting, I found something and yelled to a friend "I found some Anal-cime", the whole trip i was pronouncing Analcime (Anal-Seam) instead of (Uh-nal-Seam). My friend thought i was being funny and didn't correct me... later i heard him pronounce it to another friend and I was instantly embarrassed. It's now a running joke. See attached Anal-seam below

23rd Jan 2017 18:00 UTCJohn Mason Expert

Mine comes from my patch - Central Wales. Above the village of Talybont is the old Alltycrib mine. One afternoon some 30 years ago I was having a wander and in the glacial drift near one lode outcrop I found a boulder of solid foliated galena the size of a microwave oven.

Instead of doing a quick trespass with the car I decided I would get it back to HQ by rolling it along the ground, though as you might imagine this took some heave-ho. It was crazily heavy. All went well until the last bit - the 30-degree firebreak/path down to the village.

Halfway down I slipped and off it went, starting to bounce in the air as it gained speed. At the foot of this incline were houses and a very embarrassing and totally expensive collision looked inevitable. I started to feel very sick indeed.

It caught in a bramble patch that had some old fencing mesh tangled up in it, with no more than about five metres to go. I don't think I have ever had such a sense of sheer relief. Lessons learned, incident logged into the "things I will NEVER do again" file and I still have a 20 x 20cm block from the find - it had to be broken up due to its white-weathered surface.

23rd Jan 2017 19:23 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

Over the weekend my 6th grader proudly announced that she was studying geology in school, including both the "ingenious" and "cemetery" rock types. Fortunately, they haven't gotten to metamorphic rocks yet.

23rd Jan 2017 19:55 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

I am really having fun reading your stories, makes for a fun day so far.

Toby had a good one with the anal-cime and I have a similar one. This one my wife did with a bit of humor but when I discovered some fornacite at a local mine she forbade me using that word. Of course it was in jest but she thought it sounded a lot like a dirty word. We still joke about it today.

23rd Jan 2017 19:56 UTCBill Cordua 🌟 Manager

I was collecting on a mine dump with a group of amateurs. One lady showed me a nice specimen of goethite and wondered what it was. I said "ger-thite". She showed it some else who told it was "go-thite" and a third person said "gay-tite." She whey back to her husband and said "Wow, I have gerthite, gothite and gaytite all on the same specimen"! By the way, what's the approved pronunciation?

23rd Jan 2017 20:06 UTCBill Cordua 🌟 Manager

Oh oh! I thought of another story. When I was too young to drive, my mother would take me along on the field trips of the Mineralogical Society of the District of Columbia. I recall visiting one of the "trap rock" quarries near Leesburg, Virginia. Mom overheard some of the experienced collectors talking about the rocks being pigeonite-bearing. That cracked her up. She thought they were referring to the purple bird droppings on the rocks. I could never convince her otherwise.

24th Jan 2017 00:12 UTCTony Albini

The first year I started collecting I picked up a rock and asked experienced collectors what it was. I was told it was "leaverite". I learned this meant "Leave it right there"! I am sure all of us have found plenty of leaverite!

24th Jan 2017 00:41 UTCRobert Land

I don't to often get a chance to post here. I am usually reading and learning, but this one's right down my alley. One I finally have expertise at. Comedic oop's when collecting.

My best. After driving 6 hours to arrive at a mine in northern Ontario, First trip of the spring. I jumped out of the truck grabbed my tools from the back and headed to the waste piles. Leaving the tailgate down, and the cap open. After I got my fix, I headed back to the truck for supper, and I see my loaf of bread running across the ground with a raccoon attached to it. That's not the worst part.. He ate 3 of my six butter tarts too..................

Another cute one. working with a metal detector looking for silver specimens, focused totally on the ground in front of me. I see this ball of black and white fur right in front of me. So I strategically beat a quick retreat. Thank stars this was an early spring collecting trip also. The two skunks had other things on their minds than an intruding human.

One last one. Again, metal detecting for silver in Cobalt ON. Got into a real hot spot. Pure luck and a little skill, But we left the area pretty dug up, so any other person following us would know something had been found there, It was a very hot summer day, and I downed several cans of American beer, (I am still waiting for the buzz) so I carefully buried these where we had been digging. Next trip there were several cans lined up neatly on the surface........Your snooze, you lose.......

Have fun collecting, I do!

Rob.

24th Jan 2017 00:50 UTCDoug Schonewald

I was chipping away at a pegmatite seam in a 10 ton piece of granite along a major state highway in north central Washington when an elderly gentleman and his wife (probably in their mid to late 80's and obviously travelers) walked up and asked what I was doing. I had read somewhere that it is fruitless to begin a conversation with, "I'm a mineral collector." to people with no understanding of difference between rocks and minerals so I responded by telling them I was a 'rock collector'. Big mistake.

Before I could respond any further the gray-haired lady asked, " How long will it take you to chip up a rock that size so you can get it into your pickup?"

There was a short period of stunned silence and before I could respond her husband answered, "Dear, don't be silly. Even if he chips that rock into small pieces it will never fit into his pick-up. Just look at the size of it."

I started to reply, but they were already wandering back toward the highway, their curiosity satisfied. Apparently both were also hard-of-hearing because they both talked in abnormally loud voices and I heard him say, "That fellow seems nice enough, but he has more brawn than brains. There are thousands of smaller rocks lying all around here he could load in his truck but he picked the biggest damn rock within a mile to try to collect."

To which she responded, "Morris, don't be so ornery, but it is too bad he doesn't put that energy to a good use. A young man with that kind of gumption could make something of himself, instead of breaking rocks for a living. That's what they used to have convicts do you know."

I could do nothing but chuckle. In an instant I went from a mineral collector to being a convict ;-)

24th Jan 2017 07:39 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Hi

My rocks (sorry minerals), talk to me so what they say stays "shshshshsh" ;-)

Cheers

Keith

24th Jan 2017 11:48 UTCChris Rayburn

I have a favorite collecting spot here in Colorado that requires a one mile cross-country bushwhack through the forest. One part of the route necessitates “wading” through some tough, tangled brush—there’s no good way around it. Last summer I was making my way back to the truck with a heavy pack full of specimens. As I oomphed through the brush, a particularly ornery branch snagged my pants leg. I was beat after a day of hard digging and in no mood for this, so instead of backing up and un-snagging myself, I kept pushing forward. Instantly my pants ripped open from belt line to knee, exposing more of me than is legal. What could I do but press on? (Actually, the ventilation was kind of refreshing.) Now, I’d done this hike dozens of times over the years without seeing another soul. It’s quite remote. This time, naturally, as I approached the truck, I saw another truck parked beside it, and, sure enough, another fellow headed right towards me. I have no idea what he was doing out there. We approached each other without a word, but of course he couldn’t help but notice my…uh…condition. As we passed, I muttered “Wardrobe malfunction” and just kept going. Thank God he wasn’t leading a girl scout troop.

24th Jan 2017 12:14 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This is one my wife and I talk about often.

Just across the California border in SE California is an area that has dumortierite in remote places. You drove around and when you saw a blue rock you went to collect it.

Now in Arizona a few years later, driving the long dirt road to the Glove mine we were not going too fast and I saw something about a hundred or so feet up a wash and stopped. My wife asked why we had stopped and I replied "I just saw a dumortierite boulder up that wash, I think". "Ah, it's a painted rock she replied". I mused back as to why anyone would come out to the middle of nowhere and paint a rock, it had to be a natural thing.

I walked up the wash and without saying a word went back to the truck and continued on. I was not saying anything so my wife looked over and said "well?". All I could say was "Painted Rock!!!". To this day I can't imagine why someone would come out that far from anywhere and paint a rock blue?

24th Jan 2017 12:24 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

Rolf, you missed my buried treasure...next time turn over the rock!

24th Jan 2017 12:30 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Becky,

Please, tell me, what was your treasure?

24th Jan 2017 13:31 UTCVincent Rigatti

I was a junior in college at University of CT, and after a hard day of mine mapping during summer field camp our professors said we could dig through the mine tailings for a couple hours before the we had to leave. This was an old mine that had been closed to the public for many years so I was excited to see what I could find. After moving a lot of rocks, getting covered in mud and digging around I found a very nice hand specimen with siderite, quartz and chalcopyrite. As one of the professors was walking by I proudly showed him my find, he took it in his hand and admired it then said, "Why this is the same specimen I found yesterday and that fell out of my pack, thanks for finding it for me", he then put it in his pack and walked away. After moving so much material I knew there was no way that was true but what could I say, and I just stood there dumbfounded. I did get an A in the class, and learned on the spot if I ever found anything good to keep my big mouth shut, that applies to rock hounding and good flyfishing spots too!

24th Jan 2017 13:44 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

Rolf, it was a beautiful piece of dumortierite, just under the blue rock!!! :-D (Just teasing)

24th Jan 2017 13:58 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This is a story, or actually a couple about Ken and Barbie. No, not the dolls but people we knew with the same names. They were new to actual mineral collecting but had fun taking their teen age son out to collect.

They told us they were going over to Courtland in SE Arizona and we told them a few places they could go. We also warned them to stay on the actual road people used and not to drive onto the mine dumps because they often covered up old mines.

The next day they came in with a harrowing story.

It was one of the "I told you so" times but I just listened.

They had gone to the place I had suggested but apparently had not heard a word of warning and driven right onto the place I had warned them to stay off of. Suddenly the ground gave way under the front wheels and the car was teetering over a mine shaft the weight of the car had just collapsed.

They managed to climb out the back windows and get out safely and since the car was still teetering they had no way to get it back to a safe place. A pick up truck on the main road a few hundred yards away stopped to their waving. He had a rope and pulled the car back onto solid ground. They then said that made me happy to not have said anything. The man who pulled them back from the hole had asked what they were thinking when they drove onto the dump. They told him they had been warned about that but had not listened. The man told them if they had fallen into the shaft nobody may have found them and they probably would not be standing there now.

The same couple had also gone over to collect "fire agate" by Safford, a place many went to collect. After a day out in the hot sun with totally sunburned faces they stopped by to show us their "fire agate". I took one look and felt kind of sad for them. I said they should have stopped by here first to ask what to look for since they had only picked up the white chalcedony. I told them they had some nice chalcedony roses but not a speck of fire agate. I showed them a piece but they only went off dejected to sooth their burned faces.

One other story about now knowing what to find from a different couple. They were tourists from the East coast who had driven through Montana and heard about the Montana agate to be found along one area they had been. They asked me to look at the agate they had picked up. In their trunk were several large boulders of stream tumbled quartz. I asked them to wait a minute and got a rough piece of Montana agate. I showed them what the piece looked like if they had found it then took a cup of water and got it wet, the patterns just jumped out. The wife smacked her husband and said "there was the creek right there, why didn't you get the chunks we dragged back wet?" He weakly said "I didn't know what to do before now".

24th Jan 2017 14:06 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Sorry guys, just thought of one I have to add.

A couple of tourists from Kansas came into the store one time and loved the store we had. We talked about rocks and they had never collected any but the wife was hooked just looking at the nice stones in the store.

A couple of weeks later the woman came back in and asked if I could tell her if some of the rocks they had collected since their visit were worth anything. She said her husband had told her to come in and find out because she had just gone a bit nuts.

She said she had them in her car outside. As I walked out the door I saw immediately the poor car was nearly dragging on the ground. As I got to the car I saw the whole inside was full of football size rocks, hundreds of them. Front seat up to the window, back totally full and then she opened the trunk, also full to overflowing.

Oh boy, what to say because not one of the rocks was anything but a rock. She exclaimed where they lived was flat and there were no rocks. Her husband had told her to stop by because he was concerned the motorhome would break with all the weight of the rocks.

I told her the value was subjective and it all depended on her own love of them. I said they had no monetary value but had to add that I agreed with her husband, a ton of rock was not good to load a motor home with. She said she loved every one and I told her that then she had a problem.

She drove out very carefully and I hope she was able to part with some of them.

24th Jan 2017 14:21 UTCWayne Corwin

Becky

If you just paint over the dumortierites, people will leave your treasures alone ;-)

24th Jan 2017 15:29 UTCJeff Kroft

While working one summer on an uranium exploration project in karst topography in northern Wyoming I found an excellent specimen of well crystallized tyuyamunite in a cave. Knowing how good it was, I showed it to my colleagues on the work site who agreed that it was a real find well worth adding to my mineral collection. Unfortunately, several weeks after I found it, a director of the company for which we were doing the exploration project came to the site to see what we were finding and review our drilling results. As bad luck would have it, one of my colleagues mentioned to him that I had found a really great specimen of tyuyamunite which, upon seeing it, he felt should be an addition to his collection at corporate. Of course, when asked if he could have it, what could I do other than turn it over to him. Oh how I wish I had not shown that specimen to my friends and that it was in my collection today.

And along the line of rock pick throwing stories, while taking a field trip to see a copper-moly deposit in the Washington Cascades, our professor casually threw his pick at a tree and it lodged tightly in the trunk. Needless to say, a number of students decided that it looked easy to do that and, egged on by the professor, began to throw their picks at the another tree. What the students seemingly failed to notice was that the tree they selected was at the edge of a steep drop off. Many picks were lost that day falling into a deep canyon.

24th Jan 2017 15:39 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

Wayne, you are worse than I am! :-D

24th Jan 2017 17:42 UTCDonald B Peck Expert

Jeff that story about your 6 year old and "ingenious' and "cemetary" rocks is priceless!

25th Jan 2017 08:15 UTCDon Windeler

Good stuff all around. Vincent and Jeff get my sympathy for losing rocks to individuals who didn't do a lick of work in the earth-to-treasure concentration process!

One of my stories comes from field recon during grad school in my study area near Ludwig, western Nevada. I was on my own, hiking around doing some rough field mapping in the hills. Despite being only a few miles away from civilization, this was an area where I basically would see no one all day and was pretty used to silence.

As I walked along, I failed to notice that I had inadvertently cornered a jackrabbit against an outcrop wall. For those unfamiliar, these critters are not the cute little tiny bunny rabbits in pet shops; they can be the size of a small to medium dog. I got about ten feet away from said beastie before it decided I was too close and bolted at high speed.

Not sure if I jumped higher than it did when it ran past me, but I probably came close.

Cheers,

D.

25th Jan 2017 14:04 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This little story also gave me some very good information to lock into the recesses of my mind if I ever should need it.

It was on a trip in Mexico, way back on rough dirt roads when I got a flat tire. The tire got a hole in the side wall so was not one I could get fixed.

I put on my spare but only had the one and was already thinking of how I would get out if I got a second flat.

As I drove past a ranch there was a pick up sitting out in front. Typical of the old pick ups I saw in the remote area. This one made me stop and ask a couple of questions. The truck had tires with grass sticking out of the holes in the side walls. The people who lived there were outside so I asked the man what was up with the grass in his tire.

What he said really made me think and gave me a lot of peace of mind. He said that when the Americans get flat tires they often threw the tires out or left them with anyone who could sell them another tire. Those tires were often heavy duty tires and a cut in a sidewall or other damage that made the tires unusable for the "gringos" were picked up by the locals and they cut holes in the side walls after mounting the tires on a wheel and stuffed the tire with anything on hand, rags, hay, sand and more. The rancher said that the tires had great tread and in the back country where they lived you didn't need the air tires and these made for solid tires that lasted for years. He said of course if they drove to town they didn't use those tires since they were not meant for speed but in the back country they worked great.

Sure made me feel better that if my spare also went flat I could use the one with the hole in the sidewall just how the rancher said and be able to drive out.

I have never needed this knowledge but I have felt much better when driving in back country and getting a flat. I would know what I could do if another tire went flat.

25th Jan 2017 14:52 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This one revolves around a wholesale show at the Tucson show a few years ago.

A dealer had hundreds and hundreds of flats of old David Shannon minerals for sale. We stopped to look and there were some very interesting localities on the flats and we picked up a few at the very reasonable prices.

Actually two stories here. One was a single gold specimen for sale and a German friend bought it for his collection since he didn't have the locality. On looking under the microscope at home it proved to be chalcopyrite. He returned it for his money back the next day.

The story I started with comes from a friend who had also gotten several of the flats. One flat was labeled as thallium minerals from a known mine, the Thallium Prospect. He had been working to try and identify the species in the flat. He said after two days of work he wanted to come by with the flat and ask for my help. When he came with the flat we went to my mineral room and as soon as I opened the lid I knew the problem. There was a list inside showing how to tell the different species of thallium minerals. The only problem was the flat contained minerals from the Christmas Mine in Gila Co. Arizona.

I told him it was no wonder he was not able to tell the minerals since it was not even from there. I was watching people go through a ton of the flats at the dealer this came from, the same Shannon minerals. The people had flats sitting open all over as they examined what was inside. I can see how easy it would have been to put the wrong lid on another flat. I don't know if this had been done by accident or intentionally but it had happened, causing the friend a couple of days of study on the wrong material. Fortunately I knew the matrix of the Christmas mine well.

25th Jan 2017 16:40 UTCGregg Little 🌟

Jeff; I too found the story of "ingenious' and "cemetary" rocks very funny. Sooo, I am waiting for the translation for the metamorphic one ..... could it be metaphoric rock?

25th Jan 2017 17:14 UTCGregg Little 🌟

Vincent; I had a similar although not particularly humorous exchange defending my field trip collecting, but with a better outcome for me.

I also had a professor (renowned economic geologist Art Soregaroli) try to acquire a specimen from me during a field trip to the Britannia Mine (BC). He claimed it would be excellent for the university's economic collection. Luckily he didn't pressure me further as being a second year student, I would probably have conceded.

On the underground trip we visited a drift recently blasted and I found a large hand size slab of 8 inch wide quartz vein, wall rock on both sides(!), hosting a very showy and large bleb of Chalcopyrite ore in the middle. Fortunately I did make off with it since the mine, which had been in continuous operation for over a 100 years, closed down soon afterwards.

25th Jan 2017 18:25 UTCPeter Nancarrow 🌟 Expert

Rolf's comment in his story of the mixed up flats ". . . I can see how easy it would have been to put the wrong lid on another flat.", highlights the Golden Rule; put the label on the BOX, not the lid (or maybe on both, but never on the lid only!)

A contribution re the OP (it's about collecting rocks not minerals, but fits here I think):

As part of a project on Li-mica granites in Cornwall I undertook whilst working for the British Geological Survey, a colleague and I needed to get good solid rock specmens for geochemical analysis, isotopic dating, petrological studies etc. The requirement specified by the geochemistry lab for the intrusion chosen for detailed study, was representative 1Kg specimens, free of weathering, lichen, quartz veins or other secondary mineralisation, preferably in as few pieces as possible, taken as closely as possible to 100 metre intervals along a coastal exposure.

To get the ideal "fresh 1Kg" specimen therefore involved cracking off some pretty large lumps with a sledgehammer, which could then be trimmed down to obtain the clean piece(s) as required. It was a hot summer afternoon as we worked our way along the coast, weighed down by several large hammers and a diminishing supply of drinking water, more that countered by the rapidly increasing weight of specimens! (For those who know Cornwall, it was along the cliff of the Tregonning-Godolphin Granite, between Megilligar Rocks and Praa Sands) As we got near the western end, where the cliffs drop down towards the beach, we chose a low spur of granite near the contact with the Killas as our final sampling site of the afternoon.

Being pretty weary by this time, our first blows with a 7-pounder achieved little effect, so the 14lb sledge was deployed. One good swing removed a sizeable chunk of rock, which crashed down onto the ledge below. At this point, a girl's face appeared over the top edge of the rock just above us, accompanied by her scream to the effect of "What the **** are you doing!?"

Unseen by us down at beach level, thinking she had chosen a peaceful spot well away from the crowds on the beach to sunbathe, she had been dozing on the top of the rock, and was woken by us bashing away with sledgehammers a couple of feet below her head!

Pete N.

25th Jan 2017 23:35 UTCJohn Kirtz

I feel like I'm sitting around a campfire after a day(or week)of collecting. Love the stories! Here's mine. I was working the top edge of the old quartz mine in Dog Valley, Ca. The mine has steep walls and is a jumble of jagged talus and loose gravel. Three very young children(three to six yrs.) were running and jumping very near the edge. To make matters worse, they were wearing flip-flops! I usually mind my own business when it comes to other's children. Being an experienced miner it seemed like the right thing to do so I spoke to the mother, giving her a quick safety lecture. An elderly couple seated nearby enjoying a snack, observed my conversation with the young mother. I started down the hill and directly in front of the couple my feet flew out from under me and I landed hard on my hands and back! While on my back I raised my hand high and said, " And that's why I always wear leather gloves. " None of those kids got hurt that day.

John Kirtz

26th Jan 2017 18:56 UTCDon Saathoff Expert

When Cookie & I first moved to New Mexico we joined the local club in Las Cruces. On an early club trip to the Cookes Peak district we drove to the "upper workings" to dig. Beside the road was a large open pit - might have been a collapsed stope because there was a narrow tunnel at the upper (North) end of the pit. The floor of the pit was about 30 meters from the road at the top and the floor had many boulders (15+ Kilos each) of botryoidal fluorite. Not pretty but unique. Cookie decided they would make great yard rocks so she "kathunked" (her term for the act of rolling the boulders up the side of the pit - kathunk, kathunk, kathunk all the way to the road where she piled them. After several trips we walked further up the road to the parking/turnaround area for lunch. When we walked back to Cookie's pile IT WAS GONE!!. There was a van parked about a meter past the spot but no-one was there. After a short while a man & woman appeared from the pit, introduced themselves as fellow club members and opened the rear door of the van and there sat Cookie's pile of fluorite. She asked where they found those boulders and the man answered "right here, beside the road - wasn't that luck?". Well, after explanations we found that neither person had been a collector and had no idea that the piece of wrapping newspaper under the pile signified ownership. They happily helped Cookie transfer her yard rocks to our truck and a long-lasting friendship was begun!

Don S.

26th Jan 2017 19:21 UTCDon Saathoff Expert

In this story location and people involved must remain anonymous! During one company's work at this mine, a popular sport among the miners was to roll large gossany quartz boulders off the edge of the shelf into the valley below and then wager on who's boulder rolled the farthest. These boulders were solid and in the vugs of the gossan were desirable mineral xls but the matrix was as hard & dense as quartz! A couple of collectors decided to try and collect from these boulders on the valley floor and, since one of these collectors was a know expert "powder man" it was decided to drill & blast one of the larger boulders (probably a meter X meter X meter). The hole was drilled and the "powder" inserted with adequate cap & fuse and the fuse was lit. Our collectors ran for the cover of the vehicle and ducked behind. Very shortly later came the explosion along with a rain of quartz fragments on top of our collectors and BEHIND them. None were large enough to cause any real damage but were startling! What the "powder man" failed to take into account was the actual amount of charge necessary to simply fracture the dense quartz - not blow it into fragments.

Several days later, with permission, Cookie & I visited the valley floor and collect a good supply of the desirable minerals - thanks to an over-enthusiastic "powder man"!

Don S.

26th Jan 2017 20:15 UTCGregg Little 🌟

Rock & roll or "kathunking"(like that) was a favorite of I and a few fellow geologists when we prospected in the Yukon. In remote valleys I would come across huge (multi ton) frost heaved rocks teetering on the valley sides. Absolutely irresistible, I would topple and watch the accelerating boulder pick up speed, sometimes sending splashes of last winter's snow from the gullies and scooting across the valley floor. When the boulder came to rest and the echoing noise subsided, I was scolded with whistles and trills from below by the local residence population of Hoary Marmots.

26th Jan 2017 22:43 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Don,

Great stories! I even have a piece of that botryoidal fluorite a friend gave me. Right about it not being much to look at but the habit is interesting.

Similar story to the pile the people collected and fortunately gave back. I have a friend who goes to a lot of different mines. One story he has told me several times now is as he is collecting on the dump he comes across a large piece he wants. He sets is somewhere he will be able to find it again, not wanting to carry it all over. In at least three cases he looked and looked but never did find the pieces he had set up to pick up later. At least it leaves good material for someone else to find. Same friend also did that with his rock pick, set it down and followed some color one way or another. Then turned and couldn't see his pick. Luckily he did eventually find that one.

Different friend comes over to show me new material he collected to ask for help with identifications. When he goes home and breaks down material and finds something nice he forgets to put an arrow on what he wants me to examine and to find one crystal or one tiny pocket is so hard I tell him to bring them back when he marks the spots. Too much trouble looking for tiny things.

27th Jan 2017 13:01 UTCJamison K. Brizendine 🌟 Expert

One dealer at the shows I attend, travels to Tucson to buy and sell mineral specimens every year. During the 1990s when the Illinois Fluorspar Mines were active, fluorite octahedron cleavages were dirt cheap and plentiful at everybody’s table. He told me that one year, a man had purchased a lot of over 300 fluorite octahedrons, put them in a plastic bag and then proceeded to leave after paying for them. Unfortunately, the bag split open and the octahedrons tumbled all over the floor and underneath tables. Everyone stopped what they were doing and helped the man retrieve his octahedrons and put them into a new bag. The man was quite embarrassed and apologized, but everyone pitched in to help.

Later that night during dinnertime, the housekeeping staff began cleaning and vacuuming the floors of the hotel. One of the housekeepers was vacuuming and my friend heard a loud “KERCHUNK”. Apparently an octahedron had lodged itself in the vacuum cleaner and the poor housekeeper had to disassemble the machine, remove the offending octahedron and then continue. Five minutes later another “KERCHUNK”. This time the housekeeper began to mumble curse words in Spanish and she started to disassemble the machine, remove that octahedron and continue vacuuming. After the third “KERCHUNK” the woman than loudly started cursing in Spanish and once again removed the octahedron. This happened another 3 times and the poor housekeeper finally just quit, all the awhile cursing louder and louder.

Another story involved me and my classmates fossil collecting. There is an outcrop south of Richmond, Indiana near Liberty that my professors take classes to collect on a regular basis. I had already assembled a collection of the majority of the fossils from that locality and the only thing I really wanted was a Flexicalymene meeki, a trilobite (they are common from Mount Orab, Ohio, but they are somewhat uncommon from Indiana).

One of my classmates was directly underneath me also looking for trilobites too. She told me “stand still”, then reached her hand underneath my shoe to the clay layer she was looking at and pulled out a trilobite.

27th Jan 2017 14:44 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Jamison,

Glad you posted the fluorite story, I had really enjoyed that one.

As for that trilobite, you should have done some quick thinking and said, "didn't you see my foot on it, I was just claiming it with my foot so I could bend down and collect it".

I have one from the Tucson show. A close friend and I were at the Tucson show many years ago and exploring along the freeway, where more interesting dealers used to set up for mineral lovers. We were at opposite sides of a table with nice mineral specimens. I had just spotted a nice piece and reached to pick it up. Just as my hand closed on the piece I saw my friends hand reach out from the opposite side. He was a split second late. I looked at the piece, an atacamite with actual free standing crystals that were not flat on the matrix but stood up nicely in the pocket. As I had picked the piece up I saw the price on the label beneath it and looked at my friend and said "sorry, I got there first". It was close but it is still my favorite atacamite and the friend still complains that it was "his" piece.

At a different room with another close friend I was lucky to walk into the room before my friend. He was right behind me and there was a motel bed covered with the first of the Chinese red wulfenites to come to the show. All I can say is that it doesn't take me long to look over a sea of specimens and pick out the best. I did just that and reached for the nicest one, a $20 thumb size specimen with great color and clarity. I held onto that piece as my friend said from the other side of the bed, "well, looks like you found the only piece I would have gotten again".

All I can say, have to be fast.

27th Jan 2017 14:51 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Remembered another fun one.

One day at the Tucson show, first day of the open show, first trip to the show I was walking past rooms of dealers and saw one with Chinese scheelites in the window. I went in and looked at a shelf with nice 3cm crystals on matrix. The fellow in the room came and asked me what I would pay for that piece. The price on it was about $40 but I was only looking I told him. He kept bugging me about how much I would pay. I kept saying I was only looking and was about to leave when he said "come on, tell me what you would pay?". I turned around and since I was not interested said "$10". He looked a bit shocked and said "ten dollars?" "Yes, I told you I was not looking to buy" and I turned to leave. "OK , you can have it for ten bucks" he said. Now I was not really looking for a scheelite but for ten bucks I took out my wallet as he wrapped up the piece.

Next room I saw tri-state galenas and walked in to look around. Wouldn't you know, the man in that room started the exact same routine, "how much would you pay" he asked for a $40 piece I was looking at. I looked at him and wondered what was going on. Not wanting to get into the same thing as in the last room I said "ten bucks". He seemed very insulted and I turned and left. I had barely gotten to the next room when he was behind me and said "OK, you can have it for ten bucks." I bought it too.

I don't know if those two guys were playing some kind of "I can outsell you game" but I till have those two ten dollar pieces.

27th Jan 2017 15:57 UTCMatt Neuzil Expert

Rolf, thats a great story! If i ever get to tucson and somebody does that i will try the same! Why pass it up for 10 bucks :-D

28th Jan 2017 02:20 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

My first (of two) teaching gigs was at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, in the 1970's. The local culture in SE Tennessee is overwhelmingly dominated by evangelical Christians who KNOW that life could not possibly have evolved. The Bible would say so if it were true, right? So we had some interesting discussions on the creation/evolution controversy. And I gave the usual explanation that there has been little controversy in the scientific community for many decades, and that was also true in 1925 when the Scopes “monkey trial” was held in near-by Dayton, Tennessee. In one of my Historical Geology classes was a guy who liked to needle me, which was kind of irritating. Maybe some students, at least, liked to see who could bring up the biggest zingers for the others to cogitate on, but sometimes it was a little disruptive, too. But I didn't like stifling discussion, so within reason I accommodated him with responses. And he didn’t like geological age-dating either, since it was perfectly clear to him that the Earth could be no older than about 6,000 years.

One, day, while gathering a tray of rock samples to bring into class to illustrate how ancient rocks look just like modern materials except the latter aren’t solidified yet, and make a few more points such as how metamorphic rocks look like smeared shales and granites, etc. While collecting those samples and placing them in this wooden tray, they would rattle around a bit. Then I remembered about a “trick” rock we had, kind of dark with speckles of white material that had an uncanny resemblance to the diorite they had seen in the previous class they had, namely Physical Geology. Except it was made of foam rubber. It was the size of a medium cabinet specimen–maybe about 8 x 6 x 4 cm, that might have weighed half a pound (1/4 kg of so), except this piece of fake rock was really light-weight, probably weighing less than an ounce–maybe about 10 grams. The Devil suddenly entered my head, and I came up with a plan. Of course, some students thought the Devil had already poisoned my mind, or I wouldn’t be teaching heresies such as biological evolution and that the Earth is billions of years old.

When I lectured I usually had either photos from the field, or samples to show the “kids.” Hand specimens are like finger food for geology students, and everyone is entertained by nature slides (2 x 2 slides–this was way before PowerPoint!). The outspoken creationist student always sat about two meters away, right up front, where he was on this day. At the right time I picked up the wooden box, and put my hand in and “stirred” the rocks around (with the foam rubber too) so everyone could hear how heavy they were. I picked a few out and talked about each one, then sort of dropped them on the table just enough everyone could tell they had some heft to them. Then I picked up the foam rubber piece and turned to my “favorite” student, telling him about the great age of this sample, and I said “Here’s one you would be interested in, Steve, since you don’t believe in this sort of thing. Now I’d like to you to take a real close look at it.” Whereupon I wound up like a baseball pitcher and threw it at him. Hard, and at point-blank range.

HOLY CRAP! He jumped up a foot or so (you know, 30 cm), as if trying to go up over the back of the chair while still facing forward! Students were diving for cover! Girls and ladies were screaming! Several guys were headed for the back of the room to jump out the windows! People were hyperventilating!

The fake rock was so light in weight that it didn’t make a sound when it hit his hands (which he had put in font to protect himself). He recovered in a second or so, picked it up and threw at back at me. I caught it and tossed it to someone else, who promptly turned and threw it at the person next to him, etc. In the end we had a wonderful time playing catch with that fake rock. However, my class was essentially over at that point–nowhere near the end of the period–but there was no coming back from that. More than one person came up later and said that was the funniest thing they ever seen in a classroom. But the reaction scared the Devil out of me, and I never did that again. I think I was lucky no one got hurt, thus ending my teaching career early.

28th Jan 2017 07:56 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

Norman, that is just too funny and I can't stop giggling!!

28th Jan 2017 13:34 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Norman,

Loved that story since I have a table set up for scout teaching that has some similarities to your story.

On the table is a chunk of galena that is 11 or so pounds and not large at all. I hand that to people carefully so they don't drop them on their toes. "Wow, that is heavy" is the most common answer.

Then I do the trick with the big piece of pumice, maybe 6 or 7 times the size as the galena. I try my best to fake the heaviness and hand that one to the one closest to me.

That has a great reaction most of the time but one time it backfired when a big boy, over six feet tall but only 13 and the size of a linebacker was my choice to hold the "heavy" pumice. When he took it he was prepared for the weight and when I let go his hands sprung up and he accidentally hit himself in the chin with the very light piece. I felt really bad since it was not heavy but it had mass and that must have hurt.

I also learned that you have to be careful with kids, they believe everything you say.

I still use that pumice but I am much more careful with it after that time.

Again, great story Norm.

28th Jan 2017 16:40 UTCDana Morong

The 'fake rock' story reminds me of the time I was in geology classes and was quite impressed with Tommy Falardeau (at the time an exchange student from Canada - lost contact with him but quite impressed as he labeled all his specimens and wanted to learn about them, as I found out on a field trip with him). However, this story took place in the geology department between classes. I had a couple of pieces of foam 'diorite' (I had bought in a shop) and had noted how closely it resembled the rock (a diorite) in the ledge outside the geology building. One of the professors also had a larger specimen of foam 'diorite' in his office (possibly because it looked so similar to the local rock), and I had recognized it and picked it up and put it down again before, so I knew what it was. Anyhow, Tommy was waiting at this professor's door, in back of me, his hands full of books, and I picked up the foam 'diorite' turned around and said "Catch!" and tossed it - of course he dropped his books all over the place. I hope he has forgiven me by now, as I would really like to contact him again someday, just for old times' sake.

28th Jan 2017 19:24 UTCTony Nikischer 🌟 Manager

Starting in the mineral business in the early 1970s and intent with keeping overhead low, the mail-order side of the trade was my specialty. I ran the "shop" from a spare bedroom and would spend many evening hours carefully sorting and labeling specimens after work (yes, we all start with REAL jobs). As a geology major in college, rare species fascinated me, and that was the focus of my mineral dealing even then.

In 1974, I was offered a dealer spot on the show floor at the old Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City, the mineral and gem show run at the time by Julie Fabian. Having never prepared stock for a show, there was a frantic need for buying cotton-filled boxes, securing clean flats from the local super market (no one actually sold such boxes, unlike today), and untold hours of microscope work, carefully placing small adhesive arrows on specimens to pinpoint the rarity on each sample.

When the show weekend arrived, I dragged my wife (at the time) along to help set up, she oblivious to my interest in such arcane stuff as dusty rocks. Hours were spent the night before the show unloading on congested 33rd Street by the old Madison Square Garden, followed by many hours of carefully setting up specimens in the booth, my very first mineral show as a rare mineral dealer!

As we wrapped up for the night and began covering our tables, my wife presented me with a large handful of colorful adhesive arrows, proudly announcing that she had "cleaned off" all those annoying bits someone had dropped all over my specimens. It was destined to be the one and only show that required her assistance.

4th Feb 2017 16:39 UTCTony Albini

Years ago we were collecting at a quarry in Maine and I was looking for pink clay mineral. The first couple of trips we found a few pieces. The next trip had an abundance of what appeared to be the same mineral. On closer examination, the material was bird poop! Apparently, the birds were feasting on wild blueberries in the area.

4th Feb 2017 17:18 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Tony,

Ah, those biologicals.

I have one about the biologicals that was kind of fun.

Most are related to lichens and other such things but some are insect parts.

One that got me one time was a very iridescent crystal grouping that had me wondering what it was. It was not hollow and I thought about which mineral it could have been. I finally figured out what it was. Apparently some insect has laid eggs in a small hole in the matrix and when the insects hatched all that was left were the thin-walled shells with rainbow colors. That one sure looked like a crystal cast but turned out to be insect eggs.

The one biological that gave me a good laugh was when I brought in a specimen from out in the yard to show a young gal the sparkly jarosite crystals. I found a good spot of crystals and had the microscope focused on the pocket and let her sit down to have a look. The oohs and aahs were fun but suddenly she yelled out and jumped up from the microscope. She said there was a live alien in the hole. I quickly looked to see and it was certainly an alien to the mineral but not something unusual. It was a tiny mite, definitely a scary thing when seen at 40 power and I had to laugh. Since it had sat down in the hole I had her sit again and told her it was a tiny insect only the size of a pin head. She sat down hesitantly but soon went back to the oohs and aahs when she got to see the tiny insect under 40 power. The insect had overtaken the beautiful crystals I was trying to show but it was nice to see someone at first so scared of something moving under the microscope to the interest in all its parts and how something so small can be so complex.

5th Feb 2017 12:58 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

A friend reminded me of a funny story this morning. He was talking about the people who had brought him "meteorites" that were not.

When we ran our store we often had people come in and show us something they thought was a meteorite. The funniest one that wasn't was a fellow headed to the Tucson mineral show to sell his found meteorite. He took us out to his van to show us. He had it behind his seat and took out a towel wrapped piece. When he unwrapped the piece I saw immediately it was a nice river polished piece of limestone. I told him it was not a meteorite but no matter what I had said he was certain it was. His method was he had heard if you hit a meteorite with a stick it would ring and he took out a stick and hit his "limestone meteorite" and it did ring. I finally gave up and told him to have good luck at the show.

This happened with gold also. A young couple was in a local mountain range where a lot of gold had been found and I was giving a tour on the area to a group of kids and they overheard me talking. When I set the kids down to eat lunch the couple came over and called me aside. They took out a small jar they had water in and a bunch of golden mica they had found. Of course they were convinced it was gold and it was all over in the stream nearby. They said they had been picking up all the gold nuggets from on top of the sand. Again, nothing I said did anything to convince them it was not gold.

Sometimes one just has to let people have their beliefs until a "real" expert comes along.

5th Feb 2017 13:56 UTCSusan Robinson

A Virginia mineral collector/dealer we knew many years ago, named Tom, enjoyed the occasional trip to Canada to collect fluorapatite crystals at the Yates mine, Otter Lake, Quebec. The area where the mine is located is also known for sport fishing.

After a day at the mine collecting apatite crystals, Tom found several good ones, and put them in the trunk of his car. As he was driving from locality back to the nearby rental cabins on the lake, another car was driving towards him. They stopped and chatted and asked each other if they had any luck over the day. Tom said, "sure, I found a few about a foot long", and the other fellow was amazed. They opened their trunks to compare what Tom thought would be crystals, and the other fellow thought would be fish. They were both surprised at what the car trunks held.

5th Feb 2017 16:14 UTCEd Clopton 🌟 Expert

Two "mineral" identification stories from my early days as a young-adult mineral know-it-all that continue to keep me a little humble:

1. My mother once gave me a walnut-sized tan lump she had found and asked me to figure out what it was. She was rather evasive about just where and how she had found it, but I agreed to check it out for her. It was granular and crumbly, there appeared to be flakes of some kind of light-colored organic matter in it, and the particles that fell off it tasted salty. I reported back that it must be an evaporite of some kind consisting largely of halite ("that's the technical mineral name for salt"), and that some dead plant matter must have become mixed into it as it dried. She listened with ill-suppressed glee to my careful report and then admitted that she had in fact found it herself--in a package of salted-in-the-shell peanuts.

2. Along the same lines, a friend sent me a specimen she had found on their farm in Wisconsin. The locality was no help, since glaciers had dragged everything but the kitchen sink though that area, and who knows what might be found there. It was black with a dull luster, showed little or no wear, and had a highly developed conchoidal fracture. Its density was also suspiciously low. I wrote back, with apologies for disappointing her, with the conclusion that it really couldn't be a natural mineral and must be a man-made material of some kind. The next time I saw her she admitted that she hadn't initially told me all she knew about the piece--that it was a product of an experiment with her kids to see whether a bowling ball dropped from a height (the hay loft of the barn in this case) really would explode when it hit a concrete surface.

5th Feb 2017 16:44 UTCJake Harper Expert

This excellent thread brings back fond memories of the popular 'Mineral Stories' series that The Mineralogical Record used to run. There is more than enough solid entertaining material here to get it going again! We could all submit our individual stories to the MR with the subject line "Bring back Mineral Stories".

5th Feb 2017 16:57 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

I have one that just happened to me. I went collecting in an outflow wash about 8 miles from the local mountains. I stopped to collect various things and tossed them in a bag. Riding down the wash with my ATV I found a spot someone had stopped to shoot and there were .45 and .40 empty cartridges lying about. Having a friend who reloads I picked them up and in the bag they went.

I stopped at one place and hiked up onto a ridge where I could get an overview of the surrounding area. To my surprise, others had also found this overview great, not recent but native Indians had used the spot to sit and chip tools and I found a number of pieces of agate, chert and a few broken pieces of pottery.

Not wanting these to be in with my softer gypsum I started a different bag and took the couple of small red agates from the first bag and tossed them in the new bag too.

When I got home I put the empty brass into an empty milk jug I used to store finds for my reloading friend.

I put the gypsum through the sonic cleaner and thought it a good idea to do the same with the agates from the Indian site.

Later that day I took the Indian jaspers to my microscope and was looking at them and came across the nice red piece and as I looked I saw gold. What? In jasper, that was new to me. I started thinking where the Indians could have picked up gold bearing jasper???

It was some time later that my brain seemed to dig deep and I remembered I had picked that piece up in the wash near the brass.

I got a handful of the brass and took another jasper piece and shook them together for a bit in my cupped hands and then took out the piece of jasper. To my embarrassment the piece now looked like it contained gold. At least it didn't fool me too long. It was fake gold accidentally produced by me.

Under the microscope the brass that had scraped off sure looked like gold.

5th Feb 2017 19:31 UTCGregg Little 🌟

I would often give rambling earth science talks to students, Brownies, Cub Scouts and other youth groups. To hold interest and provide some wow factor, I would bring along a suite of hand specimens. The clear Brazilian quartz crystal gets most of the oo's and aw's but its my dinosaur coprolite that illicit's the widest range of reactions. As I launch into an explanation of source, age, texture, scientific use and, that smell is gone since it is rock now, I can watch the wide-eyed interest turn from quizzical to disbelief to down right disgust in the faces of some kids. There are usually 2 or 3 in the group that will not touch it at all.

5th Feb 2017 20:16 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Gregg,

I know the coprolite reaction well, I have some I use for scout talks too and get lots of reactions.

The funniest though is with talc.

I have a table with all my "talk" specimens on it for kid talks. I help the scouts get their geology badges and give a fun talk with lots of hands on from my table. Big chunk of galena for weight, pumice for light weight, goethite and hematite for streak colors, etc.

I have several pieces of talc on the table and always take out my pocket knife and scrape some off in each of the little hands to let them feel how soft it is. I do this before I tell them what it is getting them to guess. I always include the adults along also and when I tell them it is what they used to make talcum or baby powder out of, the kids think it is great but just about every woman in the group holds up their hand and smells the talc. I have to laugh and say that the rock itself doesn't come "perfumed" like baby powder. I am often surprised by that reaction but then the adults often don't know much about rocks and minerals.

5th Feb 2017 20:29 UTCGregg Little 🌟

Good one Rolf. I do the same with halite but like you, I don't tell them what it is other than, "we all eat rock as well". A few will actually try it and beam with the realization that indeed we do consume rock as well.

5th Feb 2017 22:31 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Posted this one in one of my articles on "sweet fluorite" where a friend visited and his daughter bought a piece of candy at a favorite local store to give us.

When I looked in the bag I was very happy to see something I had not seen in some time. It was the old sugar candy that they used to grow on a string and then eat.

This one was purple, it had been dipped in grape juice concentrate and when I saw it I swore it looked just like fluorite. I broke the sugar off of the string and put them in little boxes with labels saying "halite pseudomorphs after fluorite" and a fake location. I had them on my store counter to see if I could have some fun with people who noticed them. A close friend picked one up, before knowing what it was and I told him to give it a lick. He said he didn't have to he saw what the label said. I told him to lick it anyway and when he did he said it tasted salty. Now that got me and I told him to lick it again. He got a little puzzled and did and said, "hey, it is sweet". Sure had fun with those pieces and still have some many years later.

6th Feb 2017 12:59 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

The little gold-brass I got fooled by made me think of this one. I like the chocolate almond kisses and the foil they used around those sure reminded me of gold in color and when crumpled up in texture. I had gotten a piece of gold from a closed mine from a friend for someone and when I looked under the microscope I saw it was a faked gold with jewelry gold melted and dripped into the one hole. It was badly done and I thought I could produce a "fake" gold that would be much better looking. Just to see if I could I took a piece of ore from a local mine and took some of the foil from a chocolate kiss and crumpled it up and with tweezers worked it into the one deep hole.

A few days later a collector friend stopped by and I was talking to him about gold and he said he had wanted a piece of gold from a local mine. I took him into my mineral room and gave him the piece I had just "made". He took it to the microscope and oohed and aahed over it. I said he could have it and he wanted to pay me for the piece. That was when I told him I had made it and showed him what I had used. He laughed after that and I gave him that piece and also a real piece of gold from that mine since I had a number of them.

He took those pieces and several others I had given him home.

Three weeks later I got a call from him and he said I got him twice with that fake gold. He had put the box of new things away when he got home and didn't get back to them for weeks. When he got them out again and started looking he got all excited to see the nice gold specimen and then it dawned on him that it was the fake piece I had made. He really had to laugh.

I guess those turned out pretty good but it was the only one I made.

6th Feb 2017 18:47 UTCMilton Dye

Those fake specimens can get you into trouble also! Years back while working on my degree I knew a student that really enjoyed fossil collecting as did I.I had spent a lot of time in the southern Coastal Plain collecting all sorts of fossils.This student saw some of the echinoderms I had found and was excited to go collecting.I had saved a lot of various marls and impure carbonates for foram studies and I selected a piece just large enough to fit in the palm of your hand. I selected three small starfish that I bought in Florida,cut three depressions in the marl and carefully glued the starfish in place with Elmers glue.

I then mixed the glue with some marl and covered the starfish.After the glue dried I used a brush to clean away the marl bringing the specimens into perfect view.The specimen really looked nice,too nice for that matter!

I then showed the specimen to this student and he went wild,the perfect specimen;one oral view,one aboral view and one immature.

The next day I told him the truth as I really did not expect his excitement and he became very upset(to say the least) with me and I really do not know if he ever completely forgave me!

7th Feb 2017 07:11 UTCDon Windeler

I'll add another fake mineral story to the mix.

Every year the Crystal Gazers (one of the Bay Area clubs in which I participate) has a Christmas party and fund-raising auction. One of the members is well-known for his stibnite collection; it had become something of a tradition to put something up for auction that could be called a stibnite and hector him into buying it. One year it was a pair of aluminum chopsticks.

This particular year I had been on a collecting trip to Idaho with the Bay Area Mineralogists and brought home some iron-stained quartz. I'd also found a beat-up carbon fiber fly fishing rod that I brought home for this very purpose. A few snips with shears, some hot melt glue and crumbled matrix from another specimen and voila! Instant fake stibnite on matrix. Never mind that the "crystals" were cylindrical and hollow. I labeled it "Stibnite, fisherman's habit." Here's a snapshot from the auction:

Apparently it was good enough to pass the glance test, though, as someone else immediately put a $50 bid on it. Of course, eventually we suggested they take a closer look and said bid was quickly scratched out!

I think it now lives in a flat somewhere in the basement of our stibnite collector, along with all the other pseudo-stibnites we've forced on him over the years.

Cheers,

D.

7th Feb 2017 13:02 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Nice stories about fake specimens.

I also am quite aware of the "dangers" with doing this so I have done it very rarely and the couple of times I never let the person go more than a brief time before telling them it is man made.

I experiment myself often to try and see how fakes that appear on the market are made. The "malachite after glauberite" from the Verde Valley of Arizona was one of those to show they were made and not natural.

We found one in a collection we received one time a number of years ago that was a "galena geode". I had never seen one or heard of one. The piece was quite well made but also quite dirty. With it was a label from Morocco with a $50 price tag. I don't know if the fellow who had the material paid that price for it since he had passed away but I had it sitting on my desk to get a closer look. It was very dirty so I put it through the sonic cleaner and after it was dry and looked and saw only one tiny spot it had the glue showing.

A friend had seen it and kept wanting to buy it and I told him I wouldn't sell it to him because I thought it fake. He was grateful I refused to sell it to him.

The one fake that fits into the thread well was a silver specimen a friend bought about 30 years ago. It was a wire silver from Mexico for about $20. It was very dirty so he placed it into water overnight to soak off the dirt. The next morning he walked over to look at the piece. All the silver wires that had been all over the piece lay on the bottom of the jar with tiny white spots where the glue had softened. He couldn't believe anyone would have taken the time to glue all the little wires on for the low price of the specimen but who knows.

My "fakery" is very limited and generally done because I want to see how the fakes are made by people.

Loved the two examples above though, that stibnite fake looks very good!

13th Feb 2017 05:50 UTCCasper Voogt

A friend and I were collecting Herkimer diamonds a few years ago and were getting 4'+ down, when I moved a rock only to find a mouse sleeping there. There was another mouse, but it ran off. The remaining one kept hibernating so I picked it up and moved it out of harm's way, but even then it didn't wake up. I'm reasonably sure our hard rock mining didn't hurt it and that it was just fast asleep.

13th Feb 2017 11:15 UTCWayne Corwin

Casper

I too have had a mouse encounter at herkimer. :-D

I removed a large chunk of ledge and saw several good holes leading to pockets.

About 30 seconds later a mouse poked his head out of one of the holes, took a long look at me, and then ran back into the hole.

About another 30 seconds went by and he returned with his wife, both looking at me and squeeking, I waved and said "hello" but they both ran back into the hole.

I stuck a piece of stem from a weed in their hole so I would remember which was their hole and not bother them.

Soon I noticed the stem moving, then fall out of the hole, then the 2 mice came back out and gave me a long look, squeeked again then slowly went back into their home.

I figgured 'oh well' and started working their piece of ledge, soon knocking off another large section, much to my surprize.. about 99 mice came running out.

It turns out they had a huge nest in one of the best large pockets I had hit all week and full of fist size skelital herks and a half dozen smaller scepters.

I admit didn't really feel bad about destroying their home,,,, I felt to happy finding that pocket to feel bad.

:-D

13th Feb 2017 16:43 UTCTimothy Greenland

Back in 1962, I was collecting in an old workings in Derbyshire, England with RSW Braithwaite. The place was known as "Masson Cavern" and was very extensive. We found a few specimens with aurichalcite on galena and some cubo-octahedrons of fluorite. interesting for the locality. Mostly we spent the time exploring and mapping the old workings. On our way out I found a narrow but deep cavity and in it, a curious sort of stalactitic growth hanging down from the roof. It was dull brown with a shiny dark stripe down the side. On gentle investigation with a chisel, it proved to be rather soft and yielding... Then a pair of glittering little black eyes opened and a fanged mouth uttered chiropteran curses at me... That chisel was thereafter known as "the bat prodder".

Even back in those days we were sorry for disturbing him and left the poor fellow in peace until dusk fell. Incidentally, the shiny stripe was a wing folded closely to his side as he hung there.

Happy memories!

Tim

13th Feb 2017 17:54 UTCCasper Voogt

Wayne, that's too funny! And. those 99 mice have good taste, apparently. To them it was a giant crystal cave.

13th Feb 2017 18:48 UTCHarjo Neutkens Manager

A couple of years ago in Rohdenhaus quarry I made a group of German collectors spend the whole afternoon frantically digging a quartz vein for azurite after I worked the vein in the morning with my brand new blue painted crowbar....

13th Feb 2017 19:09 UTCMatt King

Harjo's story reminds me of my own. One of the sights you often see along the Dorset coast, and especially the cliffs between Charmouth and Lyme Regis, are dozens of fossil collectors looking for Ammonites and other fossils. One summer day, a friend and I turned up with a bag of fossils, which we quickly proceeded to 'find' in the cliffs. As our pile on the beach begun to grow some of these collectors started to get closer and closer to where we were 'digging'. It was quite funny watching them getting really annoyed as we were 'easily' finding all types of fossils and they were not. Eventually we owned up to the deception and left the fossils for kids to pick up.

13th Feb 2017 19:36 UTCWayne Corwin

One time I agreed to meet my friend Chris, after I got out of work, to go collecting.

Chris was a real newbie to collecting, only been out twice and both times to the same place.

When I arrived at the meeting spot, Chris’s truck was there, but no Chris, so I waited around.

About ½ hour later he finally showed up, with a heavy pack on and huffing & puffing.

He was all excited, couldn’t wait to show me all the good minerals he found, a whole pack full, maybe 90 pounds worth.

Chris said he arrived there in the morning and had been scouting all day thru the woods, when he found a deep ravine about a mile out.

And down in the deep ravine, he found a whole pile of all kinds of minerals, with all sorts of many colored crystals.

He opened up his back pack and on top was a couple of big specimens wrapped in newspaper just like I taught him to do.

Chris was telling me how he wrapped all the best looking ones, when I started laughing, then he said “What,, did I wrap them wrong?”

I said “No, it’s a good wrapping job, but,,,,,,,,, are all the specimens the same kind?”

And with a big smile he said “YUP !”

“You hauled this whole pack full for about a mile thru all the hills, bushes and thorns?”

Again with a big smile he said “YUP !”

I then told him he better wait to take me along next time, it was then his big smile dropped, it was also then I had to tell him he found very old asphalt (road tar).

It was kind of nice, it had crushed quartz of many colors of iron staining that made Chris think they were crystals and some of the tar that was left had a green tint.

Someone must have dug up an old driveway, judging from the thickness, and drove it way out in the woods and dumped it down in the deep ravine some time ago.

He never hauled as big of a load out again,,,, unless he was ‘sure’ what it was.

:-D

13th Feb 2017 23:26 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Great stories all.

I have one that goes back a few years. I love to write fiction short stories and having lived in Bisbee I would day dream about great mineral finds.

The old house I owned was build on a small slope and had tall posts under the back of the house. I had a leak in the bathtub pipe and went under the house to fix it and thus a story was born.

My story involved a fellow who owned an old house and while fixing a water leak under the house nearly fell through an old wooden trap door that had been covered in dirt which the leak had softened up.

The hole turned out to be an old mine shaft with an old ladder leading into it. After getting a flashlight and shining it down it showed the shaft was only about 20 feet deep. With a rope attached to a post in case the ladder was rotten, the fellow climbed down and as he got to the bottom saw it joined an old mine tunnel running under the property. The light shown up and down the tunnel to show hundreds of dynamite boxes lining both sides of the tunnel. Fear gripped the fellow since he knew old dynamite could go off easily from the sweat of the nitro.

The one lid had been knocked aside a bit to show paper wrapping things inside. The fear gone since it was not dynamite he went down to look.

Hundreds of boxes full of old mineral specimens a previous owner had collected from underground.

To make a long story short, it turned out a long ago geologist had collected all the specimens and died not letting anyone know and he became a Bisbee mineral dealer.

The story was fun to write and when I finished it my wife Mary told me not to publish it since people would think it was a real story. I didn't and after a few years a woman stopped to see us, she had been a librarian in a high school until she retired and had bought my house in Bisbee. I loved talking to her and one visit I gave her a couple of stories I had written about my life in Bisbee. She took the story along happily.

A number of years later a fellow from Bisbee came into our mineral store and started telling me about a fellow in Bisbee who had found a mine tunnel under his house full of boxes of minerals.

I laughed and told him it was a story I had written. He had quoted my story nearly word for word. He swore it really happened and nothing I said could convince him otherwise.

Only thing I could figure was the librarian had given the story to others to read and someone had done just what my wife had said, believed the story to be true.

Oh well, it falls into the old lost gold mine stories old prospectors used to tell.

As far as I know, it is the only made up story that anyone ever thought had actually happened.

14th Feb 2017 12:24 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This story is more geology related than mineral but I think people will get a smile out of it.

When my father was alive he loved listening to Art Bell on the radio. One day he called me all excited that they had found a well in Oregon that didn't have a bottom. When I asked about it he told me what he had heard on the radio. Apparently there was a well that had dried up by a small Oregon town and the locals had used it to dump trash into. First I thought "nice for the water table" but he went on. They had been dumping for years and the old well never filled up. Someone got the idea to get a big fishing spool from one of the fishing fleet that was a thousand feet long and put a big weight on the end and down the well. They used up that spool and got another one and the hole just went straight down using that spool up too.

They gave up and wondered just how deep the straight hole went.

I told my father that geologically it was not possible to have a hole that straight go that deep. I told him it must be some kind of made up story knowing what I had heard about the radio show. My father swore it was true and he was even thinking of going up to see this "Mel's Hole" as they called it. I tried to tell him it was impossible but he "believed" so I gave up.

Two weeks later my mother called and said my dad was totally bummed out since he had heard on the radio that "Mel's Hole" turned out to be a total hoax.

Just goes along with what my wife Mary always says, "don't always believe what you read", goes for what you hear as well.

15th Feb 2017 21:57 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

There is a short one that happened one time when a fellow came into my store and I had shown him a couple of cabochons I had made out of Bisbee malachite with the nice play of light in the material. He said he hoped I wore a mask when working the malachite since it gives arsenic poisoning. I stopped in mid talking and said back that it is not arsenic poisoning but copper poisoning. It was no good, he swore it was arsenic poisoning but I told him all he needed to do was look at the formula of malachite and see there was no arsenic in it. No good, he knew better so I let it go. Some people you just can't convince with actual "facts".

15th Feb 2017 22:02 UTCHolger Hartmaier 🌟

"Alternative facts" in geology and mineralogy might be another good thread to start!

15th Feb 2017 23:12 UTCScott Rider

Here is my contribution to these interesting and some funny stories:

It involves me working a vug at Saint Peter's Dome, Colorado. I got lucky and found an exposed miarolitic pocket full of albite, topaz, fluorite, smoky and microcline after a day of finding nothing... I worked it two days, for about 4-5 hours each day. During this, I had little Miller moths flying out, probably 3-5 every 30 minutes or so (about 20 when I started flew out almost immediately) for both days. There must have been hundreds in that pocket....

The pocket I worked on was about maybe a cubic foot (where I could access, it was much bigger however), and I still, to this day, have no idea how much further this pocket goes, because there were so many moths... Obviously, the pocket does go much further into the mountain, but it was a miarolitic pocket, so there is a lot of solid granite is blocking my way. Unfortunately, I wasn't too experienced with working on that type of rock, so I gave up. But that pocket could go much further into the mountain.

What makes this story funny though, I went back to that spot 2 years later to find the pocket worked out a little bit more, but not much. And there was a BRAND NEW Estwing heavy duty rock pick just sitting there, and NO ONE in this area at the time, so after yelling and trying to find someone, I kept the pick and started to continue working that pocket. BUT, the moths were still using that pocket as their home. So when I poked around that hole, I ran into another couple dozen moths that flew out... I have a feeling they were using this pocket as their home for a long time and fortunately I did not disturb them enough for them to move to another "cave" and they still found that spot a fancy place to live! But, a few did fly into my mouth as it was open in awe when I was pulling out crystals...

Just a background of that spot, it was on the side of Saint Pete's, and the drop was very steep and high. I didn't have the means to work out this pocket so its still there (as of beg of 2016) as it was very dangerous and had hanging rocks above. I didn't want to rattle those and have a big time problem...

22nd Feb 2017 13:33 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

I have one that just happened to me. I was over in Gleeson, East of Tombstone Arizona and took photos of the mines. I had seen that on mindat there were few photos of the Gleeson mines.

Now I know why.

I have probably 4 or 5 sources of literature and internet information concerning the mines at Gleeson. My frustration grew as each seemed to show different information concerning the location of the mines.

A geologist friend in the area sent me the original claim map which I thought would solve my problem but it only added to my frustration since there were many more names on each claim plot.

I used the State USGS site and found Arizona Mines and it went to the google map which showed mine symbols with long numbers. Having no idea what the numbers meant I wrote the State about it.

I was happy to see an answer on the next working day. They told me that the best reference was a bulletin I had and had found also was confusing.

I wrote back and this is where the funny part came in for me, the State representative said they had attempted the same thing I had been trying to do and that is use all the various data bases and combine them to make a complete map. Turns out they also found that each source was not matching up with the other source they used and they realized to fix that would take years of work and maybe not even going to the site and doing the actual on site work may not even fix the problem.

I really had to laugh and found that my attempt to fix location problems I had found on mindat maps of Gleeson was not going to work since ven the State of Arizona couldn't figure out the various problems.

I now realize my attempt to add information to the site may end up making for even more confusion so I gave up and realize that they are not going to be something I can separate out.

22nd Feb 2017 22:47 UTCGregg Little 🌟

Rolf; Your admirable attempt at sorting out the rat's nest of claims and mines reminds me of my work around local artisanal mining operations at Tabakoto in western Mali. The diggings largely consisted of a vertical shaft 3 feet in diameter for 40 to 50 feet deep with small drifts driven horizontally at the base of the soil overburden on the underlying bedrock. These shafts were sometimes only 50 feet apart, honeycombing the area for 100's to 1000's of feet in all directions.

I inspected a few of these "workings" but was warned by my local field assistants to step carefully to avoid a nasty and life threatening fall, especially now that the wet season was coming to an end and tall grass has sprung up everywhere. I took them seriously then marched forward to the edge of a shallow depression. I then leap, crouched down, let out a scream, paused, then leaped back up appearing to fly out of the hole above the tall grass. After rushing over my assistants realized neither hole or super-human abilities existed and settled into relief and amusement at my antics.

Later in the dry season and with even taller grass, the flora and fauna exploded into a wondrous diversity. Out with a survey crew mapping our mining claims, I stumbled across a column of about 50 to 100 very large, grey and hairy ants. They immediately turned, made a buzzing sound and charged me?! With Hollywood visions of army ant attacks, I beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately I easily out distanced them and they lost their interest or aggression.

25th Feb 2017 22:56 UTCJohn Wilda (2)

Several years ago I went collecting to a location where you had to cross a fence onto some land and again about 300 feet later to get off it. I had permission from the farmer to do so. I never saw the bull until he started walking toward me. I continued walking until he started running: straight for me. I had a backpack and one 5 gallon pail. . I had to leap over the fence to safety. After getting to safety, I realize why I was pursued: I was wearing a running shirt commemorating the Enosburg Falls (VT) Milk Run. On the back was "Get Milk"!

25th Feb 2017 23:14 UTCTony Albini

John, I had a similar situation over 20 years ago. We had to walk on a dirt road that separated two sets of cows. Between the farms was an electrified fence. As we starting walking to the quarry, the cows on one side started to follow us. The faster we walked, the faster the cows walked. Finally, they were running behind us. We had to lift the top of the electrified fence to get on the other side where there were no cows and as careful as we were, we still got zapped by it. Later, while we were at the mine dumps, the cows showed up at the bottom of the dumps and since they could not climb them, they finally left a half hour later. We told the owner about this and he told us that they had also broken out of the pen and blocked a state road until the owner brought them home! To this day, I think someone planted some illegal plant that the cows ate that day. We never had a problem when we went back to this site. This site also had a bull and fortunately we never had an encounter with it.

2nd Mar 2017 19:50 UTCDana Morong

An old friend Alan Gray, who lives in Gilsum, N.H., within walking distance of the annual Rock show (used to be Rock Swap). He used to collect at the old mica mine (pegmatite) at Parker Mountain (Strafford, N.H.), one of my favorite (local) spots. Sometimes I would just happen to meet him there, and we would trade stories (all true). One time he told me that he had found a beryl crystal with termination faces, not just the flat c-face but actual bevels. I said I’d liked to have seen that. He said he had given it away or traded it to someone, or something, as he didn’t know I was interested in beryl (I’m not interested in mere chunks, but certainly am interested in seeing an unusual crystal from that locality). I was in nearly as much of a dither about it as he had been about the books he’d once missed, altho I did not think about it at the time. I thought I would never see that crystal of beryl. Events later proved otherwise.

I was at Gilsum rock swap (show) in Gilsum, N.H. (this was June 2000). One dealer had pieces of [deceased] Al Cebula’s collection he was unloading. Most labeled, some not. Some of it may have come from other sources, but most of it was from Al Cebula. Among the not labeled was a box with 3 beryls, not great, but which I immediately recognized as beryl from Parker Mtn mica mine (Strafford, N.H.); they even had the typical associations, but though I can’t tell most stuff by sight, I sure recognized that material! So I bought them, against all principle (never buy a specimen you don’t know the provenance of) and against all sense, just for interests’ sake, for a small sum.

Around lunchtime I had the hatchback of the car up and sitting in it eating lunch. I showed Alan Gray what I’d gotten. He looked at them, said “that’s the beryl crystal, see the termination faces, that I’d dug up at Parker Mountain about 8 or 10 years ago! How’d it get here?” He had traded it later with someone, and somehow it had ended up here. He also recognized another specimen from same mine as one he’d given to someone who hadn’t found anything. You never know where some specimen will turn up!

So apparently this was the same beryl crystal about which he had told. He now says he traded it with Jim Anderson (the other specimen was the one he gave to a woman for whom he’d felt sorry as she hadn’t found anything). So now I have this specimen, and the other (he didn’t recognize the third one, although that is undoubtedly Parker Mtn, it looks just like it). How much of a coincidence is this?

9th Mar 2017 13:20 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Dana,

Fun story with the beryls.

I had collected a very nice vanadinite at a local Az. mine one time and since I was in the earnings stage of my life sold it to someone. Years later, after having thought of that specimen a number of times since I had never found as nice a one, I was at a room at the Tucson show and there was my specimen. I told the fellow who was selling at the room that I had collected that piece. He asked if I wanted it back but for nearly ten times what I had sold it for I said no thank you. It is still the nicest piece that came from the Gallagher mine.

The reason I had started on the thread is actually because of a comment David had made on one of my articles. He asked if I ever used a metal detector and I have not. One couple that used to come into our store every winter in Arizona always brought their previous years gold finds. The man had purchased the top of the line detector at a big expense his wife was still complaining about. Seems he had said he could easily find "the big one" with the new detector. Every year my wife Mary looked at his new finds and that one year commented that with the really good detector he had she wanted that two pounder if he found it.

His wife over hearing that said she had dibs on that one.

Every visit Mary kept talking to him about whether he had found that two pounder yet. Then she looked at all the material he had so far found and said that if he melted it down he may just about have enough to give her the two pounds she wanted. Mary was only joking with him but apparently he didn't take it that way and turned beet red and stammered that he was not planning to melt all the gold he had found. Even though she said she was only kidding, I think he took it very seriously and that was the last time he stopped to show us his latest finds. I know Mary was kidding also but apparently she had said it with enough sincerity he took it for what she wanted and decided not to press his luck and show his newest finds. Or maybe he did find his two pounder???

25th Mar 2017 20:56 UTCTony Albini

I remember the good old days when you could collect at the Strickland quarry in Portland, CT. One day we were climbing the Schoonmaker dump, a high, conical dump and I grabbed onto a branch of a tree. Well, it was fall with no leaves on any tree and it turned out that the tree was dead and the branch broke, Well, I slid down the dump on my backpack as if I was in a tobaggen (sic) and actually enjoyed the ride! My friend asked me if I was Ok. I told him it was an enjoyable ride but I would not trust a tree again. Bonus was we found a lot of good specimens that day.

Also, my mentor Richard Schooner (no relation to the Schoonmaker dump) told me in the 1950s when the quarry was being worked, a set of stairs was there and the owners allowed collectors to go down into the quarry floor to collect specimens when there was no blasting! I have photos of these stairs somewhere in the house and I believe someone posted photso of these stairs on Mindat.

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