A tragic loss for Arizona

I have always intended to keep this blog light and entertaining, and avoid rants. But, I read something in Rock and Gem Magazine today which upset me greatly. Our esteemed unelected Governor, she who is famed for her championing of the Arizona Immigration bill SB 1070, is closing the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum to make room for a “Centennial Museum”, celebrating the upcoming Arizona centennial and the “5Cs”, cattle, cactus, climate, copper, and cotton. This is the most shortsighted and stupid move yet for her, which, if you live in Arizona, know is saying a lot!

The Mining and Mineral Museum is recognized by those in the field as top rated and is internationally recognized. As has been noted by others, the Museum is on at least 10 different lists of the top 10 museums in Phoenix and Arizona, but the (dis)honorable Ms. Brewer has cut the ADMMR budget, so that they could not pay the rent and must move out next month. (The Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources (ADMMR) previously paid the $589,000 rent on the building for use as office space and for the mineral museum.) It should be noted that other than the rent, utilities, and a small portion of the curators salary, there were essentially NO other costs in keeping this world-class facility open. If you take into account the earnings from the minimal admission and sales from the gift shop, it is estimated that this wonderful facility, which has over 50,000 visitors annually, (including about 25,000 students) was largely self-supporting.

Polly Rosenbaum, a state legislator for more than 45 years, revered as the “First Lady of the state legislature” in 2003 said “The (mineral) museum is about more than minerals; it’s the identity of Arizona. The prospector and burro came hunting for gold and silver, but copper revolutionized the electrical industry and created the modern world. Many people have no idea how dependent we are on minerals, until they come to the museum.”

Another blogger’s (http://www.minmumad.blogspot.com) words express my sadness, if not my anger, at this travesty. “How unfortunate that the current administration plans to celebrate Arizona’s centennial by replacing the “identify of Arizona” with a 5C Centennial Museum. How ironic that the Arizona Historical Society (responsible for the 5C museum) is a participant in erasing the historic “identity of Arizona”.”

Origins

Every now and then, a non-mineral collector type asks me, “How did you get into this”? or words to that effect. I usually tell them that, if you think about it, nearly all kids, when they are 9 or 10, love pretty rocks and especially fossils. There is a small group of us that just don’t ‘lose’ that when we grow up. In that respect, I guess we’re all just a bit bigger ‘kids’.

There’s another part to it, though, at least for me. We’ve all heard the cliché about the teacher who ‘inspired’ the student, who put them on their path through their love of the subject. My ‘cliché’ teacher was my fifth grade science teacher, a man named Richard Busich. He taught at a school called George S. Patton Elementary School on Fort Ord, near Monterey, California. He was an awe-inspiring fellow, standing 6’4” tall, which made him a giant to us kids.

His classroom was a wonderland of different things to see in the world of science, from drawers full of different minerals and rocks to aquariums with snakes, mice, tarantulas, and other creatures. He shared with us his passion for science, even going so far as to taking the more enthusiastic of us on mineral and fossil collecting field trips. (Very few of the minerals that I collected on these trips are of high enough quality to still be in my case, but at the time, I thought they were fantastic.) Lots of them have made their way to my own classroom, where they come out when we are studying rocks and minerals, and as occasional ‘give-aways’.

A piece of Jade (nephrite), collected on a trip to ‘Jade Cove’, in the Los Padres National Forest near Big Sur.

I still have one shelf in my display cases devoted to fossils, and the majority of them are ones I collected at locales he led us to. One in particular I’m still very proud of, a Desmostylus tooth from a place he called “Desmostylus hill”. This is a tooth from a weird creature that is described as a hippo-like herbivore that lived in shallow water from the late Oligocene through the late Miocene. (From what I understand, paleontologists still disagree as to whether or not it spawned any descendents, some thinking hippos, some arguing for manatees, some thinking this was an evolutionary dead-end.) I, at this time, have NO idea where exactly this locale is, except it is within a couple of hours drive-time from Monterey.

His interests were not limited to geology and paleontology, though. The next year, when I was in 6th grade, he conducted a real, sanctioned Archeological ‘dig’ in Monterey, and he took students along, we did a lot of the ‘grunt’ work, using the sifting tools to go through the dirt and find evidence of human presence. (The best days were the first two, when there were some surviving pottery shards found in the top couple of feet of the dig pit.) I remember being chosen to go along (after school and weekends) perhaps 5 or 6 times (there was always a queue of kids clamoring to be chosen), and what a wonderful experience it was, seeing real science being done. Quite a bit different in reality than in an Indiana Jones movie…

Anyway, this is the man who inspired me to become a geologist. (For a long time, I aspired to go into paleontology, but a class in vertebrate paleontology in college disabused me of that notion. WAY too much looking at little, tiny bumps on bones with Latin names for my taste.) I tried some years back to ‘google’ him, thinking that it would be nice to contact him and let him know what effect he had on me and my career path, but I came up empty. That’s too bad, because as a teacher, I think that he’d like to know that he had enough of an effect on at least one student that 40 years later, he’s still remembered. Based on my best guess as to his age, he’d probably be in his late 70s now.

Another addition to my case

SWEEET. Got a surprise package in the mail today from my friends Eric and Jeanne Greene of Treasure Mountain Mining (www.treasuremountainmining.com). Had a nice Pyromorphite in it, from the Chester County mine in Phoenixville, PA. My Pyromorphite suite now has specimens from 17 different locales! A few pics later….

A special auction

Just a quick note for those of you who might want to look at some ‘high-end’ mineral specimens. e-rocks.com just started their 500th multi-seller auction, and to celebrate that occasion, Mark had his sellers put in all high-quality specimens, with a selling price of $500 or higher (actually goes up to $20000). If you want to see some real drool-worthy mineral specimens, go to:

http://www.e-rocks.com/Products.aspx?action=list&type=28546

One of those, for your viewing pleasure, a Rhodochrosite from the N’Chwanning I Mine in South Africa:

Mineral Auctions on the Web

Today’s blurb will concern itself with web-based mineral auction sites. I have previously mentioned minerals at auction, and there are quite a few sites on the web that have auctions for mineral specimens. There are many, many auctions attached to single-owner websites, and I won’t favor or slight any by talking about them. If you want to look them up, a google search for “mineral auctions” will turn up quite a few.
As far as multi-vendor sites, there are three prominent ones.

eBay we all know about, and I am not going to spend a lot of time telling everyone what they already know, except to say that, from my perspective, the ‘glory days’ are over. Just a few years ago, any reasonably nice specimen (with a few exceptions, of course – see my “random tidbits” post) would attract a fair number of bids and sell for reasonable prices. Not so much anymore, I can tell you from personal experience that the traffic (or at least the bids) are down such that many items that previously would have seen lots of attention now sell with one or two bids, or none at all. Several prominent vendors, who used to list all items starting at $0.99 and watch the bids roll in, have given up on that scheme and now list most of their items for fixed-prices, not at auction at all. We ourselves only list a very few items at auction and mostly rely on the fixed-price format for the majority of our items we list there. I’m not at all sure what the reason is for the change, is it the bad economy, the major (mostly BAD, in my opinion) changes that the current regime has foisted on its patrons, a result of some bad press that they have gotten, or a combination of all three? But enough of that subject…

There are two other prominent websites that have multiple dealers selling minerals at auction, John Veevaert’s mineral-auctions.com (not to be confused with mineralauctions.com, which is a single-owner site), and Mark Wrigley’s e-rocks.com. Both are well-run, respectable sites, with excellent reputations. I definitely recommend that you check them out if you are itching for something new for your case.

E-rocks.com is a very ‘busy’ site, with auctions ending every day. There are quite a few sellers who list there, and in addition to the three ‘regular’, multi-seller auctions every week (T, Th, and Sun.), there are always auctions from individual sellers going on, filling in the other four days of the week. As this is a truly international site, with dealers from quite a few different countries participating, you will see some quite interesting themes on the individual auctions. Just recently, I saw a ‘Tsumeb’ auction, with 80 different Tsumeb specimens, and one of the dealers has a fixed-price page running now with all Kunzite specimens, so if you are looking for something in particular, chances are that within a short time you’ll find it there. All auctions run on 7-day schedules, and many dealers also have ‘Buy It Now’ on their items, if you just can’t take a chance on losing that special one. Mark also allows sellers to have their own ‘pages’, with fixed-price items for sale. If you’re looking for nice minerals at reasonable prices, there’s always an auction closing today!

Mineral-auctions.com doesn’t have the same frenetic schedule that e-rocks has, they pretty much stick to 3 auctions per week, usually on a 3- or 4-day duration. Each of the three auctions is in a different category. First is the ‘special’ auction, with a particular occasion, such as ‘Tucson special’ auctions that run in February, for the dealers to showcase their new finds from the show. In these ‘special’ auctions is where the dealers occasionally have their own individual auctions. Second is the weekly ‘dealers choice’ auction, where the dealers are free to list any nice mineral specimens they have. (I say ‘nice’ mineral specimens, because the site manager is vigilant in looking at listings, and doesn’t hesitate to take down anything that doesn’t meet their high standards. They are rightfully proud of the quality of their site, and don’t allow pedestrian, $5 rocks to be listed.) Third is a ‘theme’ auction, where the administrators come up with a particular theme or category, such as ‘North American minerals’, or ‘rocks with 3 or more mineral associations’, or ‘Native elements’, etc. They also allow the dealers to have ‘Buy It Now’ prices on their auctions, but don’t wait too long, those ‘BIN’ prices generally disappear after about 24 hours!

So, if you are wanting to add to your collection, and just can’t wait for the next show, you have a couple of excellent options…..

To close today’s post, a pretty to look at: Azurite with Duftite from renowned Tsumeb, Namibia

A few pretties for your enjoyment

Being a Science teacher has its moments, but there are times that I miss the days of being a mine geologist. I was fortunate enough to spend several years working at the Ray Mine in Arizona, and one of the ‘perks’ of being a mine geologist is that you have the opportunity to collect some fabulous specimens. Ray is well known for a variety of fine minerals, and I was able to collect a fairly nice suite for my collection. Here for your viewing enjoyment are a few of the specimens in my case.

Several examples of Drusy Quartz on Chrysocolla, and Chrysocolla stalactites, from the late ‘90s find in the ‘Ballpark’ area of the mine.

A very fine Cuprite, that I traded for. Came out of the Pearl Handle Pit in the ‘70s, when the mine was being operated by Kennecott.

A very unique specimen, the only one I’ve ever seen or heard of from Ray – a couple of small native Silver crystals intergrown with native Copper from the eastern side of the Pearl Handle.

These are just a few of the specimens I managed to collect from this wonderful deposit. I have many others, which I will share with you later. The only really spectacular item that I’m missing is one of the Calcites colored red by Chalcotrichite that came out at around the same time as the nice crystalline Cuprites. There were only a few very nice ones collected, and I’ve unfortunately never managed to get my hands on one. Well, maybe someday… as they say, hope springs eternal!

San Francisco Show July 9 – 11

Just a note that the San Francisco Fine Mineral show is going on today and tomorrow at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Rafael, CA. If you want to see lots of pics of some fabulous minerals posted yesterday, join the Rock, Gem, and Mineral Clubs group on Facebook, one of the members posted 59 pics yesterday. Nice!

Wish I was there…..

Random tidbits……

Just a few random tidbits today, more soon…

I see that I have received my first comment on my blog, which I actually had to rescue from the ‘possible spam’ folder and approve; it was: “Possibly worth as much as 4 stars because of its relative uniqueness but not for its inherent worth”.  That gave me a bit of a chuckle. I liked the ‘relative uniqueness’ part, if this blog is unique or different from others about minerals, that (at least hopefully) is a good thing!  The ‘not for its inherent worth’ part gave me the chuckle. At least so far, my posts probably have NO ‘inherent worth’.  Perhaps later, when I post about shows and such, there will be some “worth” in my posts, but so far, probably not so much…….

An addendum to my last post, about how much rocks are worth.  I forgot to add the last thing that I was going to say, that is, what happens when there is the opposite of a ‘bidding war’ for a rock that is at auction.  Below is a picture of a Japan-Law Twin Quartz crystal from Flor de Inca, Peru.

What is unique about this rock?  Well, mainly, its size. It measures 3 5/8 x 2 3/4 inches (more than 9 centimeters), which is the largest single crystal of its type that I have ever seen. (There are reports of crystals from Japan which reached up to 45 cm., but I’ve never seen one of those monsters. The largest one that I could find by searching google, that measures 7.7 cm., sold recently for $120.)  So what makes my specimen unique?  I bought it on eBay 7 or 8 years ago.  The seller listed it at a low starting bid of $5, hoping for enough bids for it to reach a respectable price.  Unfortunately for him, I was the only bidder, and won it for $5!  He probably was gnashing his teeth the whole time he was packing it to send to me.  So, is (was) it “worth” only $5?  I think not. I’ve considered putting it up for sale on the website for what I think its worth, but I’ve decided (at least for now) that it would make me sad to part with it, and so it’s staying in my case.

And now for something completely different:

Everyone in the mineral collecting world knows about the wonderful Azurites, and Malachite pseudomorphs after Azurite, that have been coming from Milpillas, Sonora, Mexico for the past few years. A dealer friend of mine mentioned to me that there was a recent find of what he called ‘spectacular’ Brochantites down there, but so far, I haven’t seen any that have made it up here. Maybe at the Denver show???

How much is that worth?

If you’ve ever talked about mineral specimens or showed an interesting one to someone who is not a collector, you may have heard this question.  The answer is simple, really, although there are several variables to consider.

The bottom line, not only for minerals, but for any commodity, really, is that something is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. Many items in our society sell for what I personally consider ridiculous prices (but, as my wife is wont to tell me, I’m a “cheap bastard”), but if someone else is willing to pay that amount, that’s what they’re worth.

In minerals, several things factor into the ‘worth’ or price that a specimen will fetch. The more attractive something is, obviously that increases its desirability. But, more than that, in the mineral ‘world’, the rarity and the provenance (origin) of a particular specimen has a lot to do with the value. If a mine or locale is closed or defunct, that will increase the value of specimens from that locale.

The ‘history’ of a specimen can also figure into the value; who has previously owned it and when. Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago, the Philadelphia Museum of Natural History sold off a large portion of its mineral collection. Many of these specimens had been at the museum for quite a long time, understandably.  I had the good fortune to view some of the collection when Collector’s Edge in Golden, Colorado was reselling the portion that they had purchased. All specimens were very nicely packaged and displayed with the old Museum labels intact.  In spite of that fact that many of these specimens were what I would categorize as ‘spectacularly unspectacular’, the history, and the old-time label, lent to them a ‘value’, a price tag, that they would not achieve otherwise.

When specimens are sold at auction, the ‘heat of the moment’ can also raise their desirability and value. We are all familiar with the term “bidding war”, and these kinds of things can raise the value (at least in the short-term) quite a bit.  Another example:  We, several years ago (before BandLMinerals.com, when we were just starting out as sellers on eBay), purchased a ‘flat’ of blue Stoneham, CO Barite crystals from the aforementioned Collector’s Edge, in their wholesale locale at the Tucson show in February.  The flat was just a bunch of mud-caked, just as they came from the ground, crystals. It was hard to tell what was there, really, but we took a chance on the flat (it was only $60), and after taking it home and washing away all the mud, got about 30 nice crystals, with intact terminations, that we deemed ‘saleable’.  (Probably about half of what was in the box.) Overall, a pretty smokin’ deal, I thought.  We started selling them on eBay, mostly starting the auctions at $9.99.  Many of them actually sold for the opening price, or just a few bids higher, but we had one auction, for a nice crystal but nothing special, where two fellows got into a bidding war, and the crystal ended up selling for $94.  Was it “worth” that much???

Hello world!

As this is my opening salvo, I thought it appropo to begin with an introduction. My name is Bob Williamson, and since I was 10 years old, I’ve been a rock collector and mineral enthusiast. (Why do I feel like I’m sitting on a chair in a circle and it’s my turn to stand up and say “Hi, I’m Bob, and I’m a rocklicker.”) I will be, from time to time, posting thoughts, information, etc., that hopefully will interest/amuse/inform you about various things on the general subject of minerals and mineral collecting. Some might be my experiences in collecting, information and/or reviews on shows, reports on ‘new’ or ‘hot’ minerals that appeared at a show, info on websites that deal with rocks and minerals, and whatever ramblings might need to leave my head on the subject.

Before we go any further, I have a confession to make. Yes, I’m a mineral dealer. My wife and I sell under the business name of B and L Minerals, our website is, of course, BandLMinerals.com. If you’re so inclined, take a look and you might find something that you like. If so, I’d be happy to sell it to you, if not, well… thats OK, too. I promise that this blog will not be filled with constant, shameless plugs of our business, I will keep the references to that at a minimum. I may, from time to time, make a reference or post a pic of a particular mineral IF it is relevant, not for advertising.

Back to the intro: in ‘real life’, along with the mineral business, I’m also a Science teacher, and Lisa is a nurse. So, between our ‘day’ jobs and the mineral business and normal life, we’re pretty busy. All that’s just to say that these posts will probably come in spurts, with some lags in between when life gets in the way of my ramblings here. Right now, I’m off of work for the summer, so I’ll be able to give you my musings regularly, so stop back by; now that I’m past the intro, I’ll actually start “Talkin’ Rocks”!