I first visited the Tucson shows in 1992. My intention was to buy faceting rough, but there was almost none I could afford, although the rand/dollar exchange rate was 6:1. One day, walking around with my friend and research colleague David Killick from the University of Arizona we wandered around, dazed and bewildered by the spectacular minerals from Afghanistan on display in one of the numerous tented venues. On one table, crowded with Afghan ethnic jewellery, possibly all modern, there sat ...

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Malcolm Jackson

The Blue Lace Agate article by Jo and Duncan in last month’s Mineral Chatter inspired me to make a box and as I had some really nice pieces of Yellowwood around, I got sawing and made the box you see in the picture. I made the box 300 mm × 400 mm × 100 mm deep. I hope to catalogue the specimens and add some artwork. I also want to include Jo and Duncan’s article in a booklet format.

I wanted to house some of my Blue Lace Agate specimens that I had collected over many...
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Dave Hawes

I was lucky to be able to go on the trip that the club recently organised to the Richtersveld but unfortunately unable to attend the report back a few months later.

As I have been able to visit the area on numerous occasions, for a variety of reasons, since my first visit in the early 1980s I thought that I could share some of my experiences with the club.

While I had visited Namaqualand as a typical tourist to see the flowers, my first serious visit in the early 1980s was to del...

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Mandy Freeman

With a sense of excitement and anticipation of the mineral treasures Madagascar offers, we boarded Air Madagascar on 1^st July this year (okay, 4 hours late, but at least on the same day). Our trip was part rock-hunting (obligatory in the Freeman household), and part island-holiday. Boy, were we in for a surprise…

We arrived in Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar where our adventures in a hired 4x4 with driver began. Tana, as it is known, has several stone markets where you...

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By Peter Rosewarne

Sifting through my collection in order to catalogue and assess specimens more fully has got me thinking more about some of their mineralogical and crystallographic properties. Why are some examples of the same mineral one colour and others another? Why are some stubby and others prismatic? What crystal system do they each belong to? What is ilvaite or axinite or vivianite?

I’m fascinated by the interesting habits that some minerals exhibit which in many cases don’t see...

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By Peter Rosewarne

   

Having built-up a mineral collection the question arises, at some stage, as to what to do with it looking to the future. Options include do nothing (and continue to get enjoyment out of looking at and handling the specimens) and let someone else worry about it when you’re gone (i.e. throw it away), give it away, donate it to an institution (probably unwise in SA or anywhere probably), or sell it. This article looks at some aspects of the pricing and selling process ba...

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Talking about treasure hunting, let me tell you my story … It’s a tale of two parts.

I’ve always been the poster child for the story told by Victor Borge:  “if there’s manure, there must be a pony.”  It’s in my DNA.

Truth be told, my first real life encounter with this approach was doomed. 

To understand it better, you’d have to know that back then Dinner, Bed and Breakfast at a swanky hotel cost R40-00 and a full seafood buffet at the same hotel with all you could eat cos...

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About ten intrepid Jan Coetzee crystals made it to the reunion, with two of 50 kg-plus guys sending their apologies due to being overweight, along with a couple more whose owner couldn’t provide transport on the day. One rare and seldom seen fluorite (also from the same crystal pocket) came, and was much admired. Malcolm Jackson gave a short presentation about the mine and its location, along with photos taken by him and Jo of the Jan Coetzee mine dumps in recent years and the remains of th...

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A couple of years ago, I bought a small ornamental gold-panning miner from a charity shop. As he was related to our hobby, I wanted to rescue him from an unknown fate, and little did I know it then, but he was the start of a new collecting hobby. Today, I have several mining ornaments, which were shown at a “What’s Up?” exhibit at the June monthly meeting. They are rather rare, and all have been bought cheaply from secondhand dealers. They are made of metal, with two mounted on sliced a...

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Dave Hawes

I have always thought that there are two types of people in the world, those who collect and those who don’t.

Those who don’t, often live in immaculate, almost antiseptic, homes where nothing is out of place.

Those who collect can be divided into several groups: Those who collect for business or academic reasons, it is their work. Those who collect for the appreciation of all things natural, and who usually display a few prized pieces on their mantelpiece. Those who collec...

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Rockey Ollewagen

My interest in crystals started about fifteen years ago. I was just a regular IT guy, working in the corporate environment, not having any idea what the crystal world was all about.

Then my wife, Paula, arrived home one day with a quartz crystal which cost R70 at the time. I couldn’...

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Graham Harrison

The whole thing started with a chance find of some lovely smoky quartz crystals while on holiday in the Knysna area in 1973. I did however grow up on a farm near Johannesburg, so these smoky quartz crystals led to me hunting for amethyst in the Muldersdrift area and in later years spending many days at the old limestone quarry outs...

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I began collecting minerals as a schoolboy, when I was given a piece of “copper pyrites”, and even earned by Boy Scout’s Naturalist Badge with a shoebox full of rocks. But my more serious collecting began in my late twenties, when Cape Town had a number of curio shops, all selling Tsumeb and Namibian minerals. They were common – but much harder to find then were South African minerals. I still have two of my earliest: a rhodochrosite and a manganite. I can remember ...
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How It All Began

My first exposure to the world of minerals and crystals was while taking geology ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels at school in Brighton, UK, in the late sixties. My interest was of a fairly general nature at that stage, although the seeds of mineral collecting were sown on some field trips, one to North Wales, where I remember being excited by picking up some pyrite and bornite specimens. Next stop was reading geology at Kingston University, London, where a firm inter...
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My mineral collecting did not start out well. I dropped a prized calcite specimen and it broke. Thirty five years later I still regret it. My clumsiness put me off collecting minerals for twenty years. Evidently I was not up to looking after these treasures that grow in the dark. Instead, as an unconscious penance, I concentrated on faceting, which really is a matter of painstakingly transforming broken crystal fragments into reflective gems, giving them renewed sparkle and life.

But the hunt ...
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