A Few New Additions to My Collection Lately

Posted on August 5, 2018 by jwj

Recently I made a few purchases to add to my growing collection of Viburnum Trend Minerals…since I can`t go underground and get them myself, I sometimes have to purchase them, and these were from the old collection that my buddy Dave purchased a couple of months ago from a retired miner. I understand that he has several more flats available, and I am waiting for the word on acquisition of those as well. I will also be visiting my buddy Gary in southern Illinois in a few weeks, on my way to the Central Kentucky trip, and see what new material he has from the past few months of mining fluorite, quartz, calcites, and lead specimens in his area. I am looking forward to that trip and visiting with many friends down there over Labor Day Weekend, always a lot of fun for both Onyx and me.

Here are a few of the purchases I made in the past month….the first 2 images contain a beautiful smokey calcite with a thin piece of matrix covered with chalcopyrite, from the Brushy Creek Mine, likely from the Crystal Cavern that was discovered about 25 yrs ago…it is upper left corner of both images, there is a smokey calcite plate in the upper right hand corner of the images, with reddish yellow pyrite nestled in the cracks and corners of the plate, from the Casteel Mine, the only mine where the pyrite in these colors comes from, and the calcite plate in the bottom of the images is from the Sweetwater Mine and has a little bit of malachite on the plate…

The next three images show some of the Phantom Calcites I purchased from Dave back in June, and the 3rd image shows one of those crystals backlit….although many of the pretty calcites often come from the Sweetwater Mine, these came from Brushy Creek Mine….

the next two images show some very pretty blingey crystals, these are from the Casteel Mine…I can count on two hands the number of specimens in my collection that came from the Casteel Mine over the years…not very many, same goes for the Magmont Mine, not very many….

…this next image shows the underside of the calcite plate with the malachite on it…the underside of the plate is covered by quartz and simply gorgeous quartz….one of the reasons I liked it so well, kind of a two for one special…

This next image shows a few of the smaller pieces I purchased…not all of them are shown, as I purchased about three flats and only about one flat is shown here, so I am basically showing you the highlights of my purchases….and some were sold within a week to friends who liked them as much as I did….

…the next several images show one or two specimens and many are covered or partially covered with chalcopyrite…I keep these in shaded and dark areas of my home to keep the chalco from oxidizing on me…luckily tho, there is a good and fast cure for that if it does still happen…

..I am often asked by new rockhounds, what colors chalcopyrite comes in…the image above and below should give you a good idea what colors and how bright they can be in the right light…

…and this next image shows a unique specimen with a chunk of calcite coming up out of one corner and anchored on the left end by big pyrite balls….

Beautiful stuff for sure. 🙂

Three Weeks in a Row

Posted on August 5, 2018 by jwj

I decided I was going to drive down to the Park Hills Show on Sunday morning…I wanted to see if I could find some of those new agates out on the market, found in the country of Madagascar and some more of the chalcopyrite-bladed barite-sphalerite ball pieces found in the Washington County Quarry. Since I knew that would be at least half a day wandering around looking at everything and visiting with my dealer friend Johnny B from Mt Ida, who is always there, I decided to drive back to the Secret Spot Quarry on Saturday June 9th and see what else I could find there. We were up before the crack of dawn thanks to my new job, which requires me to get up at 4 am these days to get ready to go to work…and about fifteen miles down the road, I looked back and saw the beautiful sunrise….

…and fifteen minutes later, the sunrise only deepened and got better….

…and then ten minutes later, we saw a beautiful rainbow…I was thinking, man what are we going to see next ??!!

…there were a few scattered thunderstorms on the radar before leaving the house, but going by the way they were moving on radar, it appeared they would miss the quarry, so I wasn`t too worried about getting wet this morning…soon after arriving about 7 am, it was clear that some were going by just east of us…

and another storm passing by east of us about an hour later….

…and a few hours later, I heard some thunder and figured maybe we might get grazed by this one…

and as it was, it came right over the top of us and I decided to head on over to my buddy Dave`s house…he notified me that he had purchased an old collection of Viburnum Trend minerals so I decided to go see what he had…as we pulled into his drive, I looked east and saw another storm brewing…

…this storm apparently hit the Park Hills area and paid everyone at the show there a visit, high winds, hail, and hard rain for about 90 minutes, from what I heard the next day when I was there visiting with everyone. Dave had quite a few nice crystals and minerals in the collection he purchased from a retired miner, nice ones that had been collected at least 75 years ago…

I was gonna crop this one off at the bottom of the image, then noticed Lola down there and decided to leave it…she is David`s guard dog for his Mom and a very pretty German Shepherd too. Those are some unique lead cube clusters above on the table, some with chalcopyrites attached. Closeup of the big one in the next two images….

…and some gorgeous never seen before pyrites with some deep reds, oranges, and gold colors in them, from the Casteel Mine, which rarely produces really pretty specimens…

…and there were some stunning calcites in this collection as well…golden honey yellows and orange yellows as well as several smokeys from Brushy Creek Mine….

MAGsters Rockhunt Missouri 2016

Posted on April 13, 2016 by jwj

Members of MAGS, the Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society, a club I am a member of as well, came up to Missouri two weeks ago to go rockhunting with me at the SS and MFQ areas. Also on that day, I was contacted by a guy out of the Chicago area named Bill, who had his own blogsite….he had contacted me the week before by email, said he was an avid fan of my rockhunting blog site…this site….and that he enjoyed my stories and photos…I was floored, because I had been reading his site recently about some locations he had been to recently, and told him that I enjoyed reading his stories too. He and his girlfriend Debbie were up in the KC area at that time and would be traveling back to the Chicago area by way of the scenic route, they were planning to drive to Potosi to look for druse…I advised him that they might want to avoid that area, because recently many locations where we used to be able to go to and collect both druse and barite at, had become closed to rockhunters. Many of those areas are very rural properties, they have become infested with meth labs and overzealous rockhounds, so property owners in that area are no longer tolerant of rockhounds on their property there. I suggested that he instead join MAGS members on their druse hunt with me…he and Debbie stopped off at my home to visit with me and see my outside rock collection. Before heading on to Potosi for the night, they decided they would drive over the next morning to join MAGS as members and go with us to the druse hunt.

Many of the MAGsters drove up on Friday afternoon, April 1st, some camping out in various areas, some staying in motel rooms…. Onyx and I drove down early Saturday morning to meet them at the meeting spot. We arrived a few minutes before 8 am and soon after, Bill and Debbie showed up, and then some of the MAGS members started showing up as well. WC, the club President, had told me a week earlier that he was not sure how many were coming up for the trip, he figured it might be a small group, but as more and more folks showed up, I decided we had better relocate to a larger parking lot just north of where we were at now.

While waiting for some of the members who had spent the night in Park Hills, Bill and Debbie joined the MAGS Club and I was able to meet Charles Hill, the Field Trip Director for MAGS..I have been talking to him for months but had no idea what he looked like and vice versa I am sure for him…it was nice to finally put a face to the emails. My friends Carrie, Jeff, and Bentley from the KC area, arrived soon after, camping just north of the meeting spot, and I was able to visit with them as well. WC and a few other members arrived soon after from Park Hills, bringing Betty Marler with them…I hadn`t seen Betty in a couple of years and wondered how she was doing. One of her nephews brought her over to join us and she looked and sounded just great…it was a real joy to visit with her that day, she and her husband Lloyd were some of the founding members of the Park Hills Mineral Club, they host the Park Hills Show at the old Federal Mine each year, which over the years has become a well attended and well liked show each year in June.

We soon were all headed down the road to the druse location, everyone following me in single file and we soon arrived there…I pulled over and directed everyone into the entrance, some driving up a small hill to the right and others pulling in to the left side to park…we had several vehicles but had plenty of room for all to park off the road. From there, everyone booted up, grabbed tools and buckets and headed out in different directions to hunt for druse quartz….

05 Bill and Debbie of Chicago

…while there, one of the local neighbors, who lives on down the road, and had invited us to her property when we finished collecting there the year before. stopped by to visit with us and see how we were doing. After collecting there all morning, we drove to a second location, an area that I have often referred to as the secret spot. There were some MAGsters who had inquired about getting some larger druse, and so we drove there because as Onyx and I had discovered a few weeks prior on a scouting trip, there were several large chunks of druse quartz there, and the members that drove over there looking for them, found several nice ones to take home with them. We were there for a couple of hours and then I led a few of the rockhounds still with us, down to the home of a good friend of mine who is a Viburnum Trend mineral dealer…he doesn`t charge an arm and a leg and is very knowledgeable about the minerals that come from the area mines as well. He had several pyrite encased double terminated calcite crystal pieces as well as lead cubes…..

….and those who purchased from him left very happy. Onyx and I headed home, scheduled to meet them at MFQ the next morning at 8:30. Once home, I loaded up the bed of my truck with twelve buckets of grab bag material for the club`s annual show which is held the last weekend in April each year.

Early the next morning, a fire truck woke me up going by my house at 4 am, enroute to a house fire north of town…Onxy and I drove out to the location, where I photographed the fire for the local paper….which I do quite often. It was a devastating fire, the family escaping with only the clothes on their backs and had to break in a front side window to get their grandson out as well.

Forty five minutes later I was back home, editing up a few photos for the paper before heading south once again to meet the MAGSters at the MFQ. We arrived a little after 8 am, to find a couple of members from Mississippi there waiting, and soon after, Charles, Mike, and the rest arrived and we all proceeded down to the coved wall area and spread out to look for goodies, which were high in abundance that day, including many dogtooth crystals found laying all over the place, prime for the picking….

24 Eminence Quarry 26 Eminence Quarry

I walked up on the knob in front of Charles in the middle of the center mass of rock and found a pocket at the base of it…everyone was busy with their own finds, so I grabbed my new mini mattox and was able to dig it out shortly after….

…soon after that, Chuck Reed and family showed up from the St Louis County area…Chuck and his daughter Mackenzie recently joined MAGS…he and I are also members of one of the St Louis area clubs, however MAGS is very proactive with field trips for its members where many clubs these days are not…field trips can be the very lifeblood of a club these days. We hunted there for another couple of hours before folks started heading for home…while I was out helping others find some nice crystals to take home with them…Bob Cooper, the Membership Director for MAGS, transferred the many buckets of grab bag material that I had transported down there in my truck, over to his heavy duty diesel truck to transport back to Memphis. If you find yourself down in the Memphis area the last weekend in April looking for something to do and see, The Earth Wide Open is a great rockhound show to attend there, something for adults as well as the kids. More info can be found on the show at www.theearthwideopen.com

We were finding alot of dogtooth crystals laying all over the floor of the quarry, as well as in several of the berms next to the walls…there were many pockets high up on the wall and it appeared the they had likely rolled out of the pockets and fell to the floor, many of them undamaged by the fall. Needless to say, many who found them, were quite happy with their finds, much easier to pick them up then to have to work a wall pocket to find them. Chuck and his family followed me up to my mineral dealer`s home shortly after everyone took off for home, and we purchased a few more crystals there before heading home as well. A long weekend for sure, but a very worthwhile and nice time visiting with good friends.

Lately, I have found out that several who read my blogsite stories, try to figure out where I am going to rockhunt at. Let me advise you first, that some of the locations I go to, are on private property and require permission to go there…I have that permission to go there and rockhunt there…if you do not have it, or you dont want to make the effort to get it, do not go and trespass there thinking just because I wrote about it, you can use my name to get access, or that it entitles you to go there as well. Those landowners won`t buy your story either, and you will wind up in jail for trespassing, or worse.

This is why I do not list the locations many times, because some assume that they can go there without permission. Do the ethical thing, abide by the laws of the land, make the effort to contact the landowner yourself and secure permission to go there and hunt. It`s not any different from any other type of hunting on private property.

if you have any questions, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Life After Arkansas

Posted on December 14, 2015 by jwj

Took all of two weeks after my return from Arkansas before I was driving down to MFQ once again, this time it was just Onyx and I making the trip. We arrived about 10 am and discovered one large blast pile right in the middle of the quarry, and two smaller piles remaining from prior blasts, one to the right and one over to the left in the coved wall area. This one was spread out extensively and covered the back road going around the crusher to the coved wall. It was huge and I photographed it from right to left in 3 photos….

Onyx and I got out and stretched our legs a bit and then as I was getting ready to hunt, he got in a couple of wind sprints and then returned to walk up the right side of the new pile with me…within fifty feet I started finding crystals and clusters laying all over the place….I was finding so many initially that I decided to drive my truck over to that side as well…

…and took this photo looking back at the front side of the pile and how scattered the rocks were toward the entrance….

…within a few minutes, I had two bags full of loose crystals and small clusters, many appeared to have a white sugar frosting poured all over them…and I started finding several yard rocks toward the middle of the pile as well…some I carried over to the far side and stacked them up on the edge of the pile so I could simply drive over and pick them up later. I didn`t take my camera up there with me, and just got them cleaned up this weekend so will snap some photos of them once the soggy rains stop in the next day or two and post them on here. I can safely tell you that I was afraid I wasn`t going to have enough room in the bed of my truck nor enough wrapping cloths to protect them either. As it was tho, I had just enough room in the truck, utilizing the front and back floorboards for many of the yard rocks. Afterwards, I drove over to the coved wall area….

…where there was a small pile remaining…very steep tho, so wasn`t gonna be climbing it up the middle. I was able to scramble up the sides tho and check the wall for pockets, and near the top discovered a few small pockets with some beautiful red colored calcite crystals that resembled hexagonal nuts rather than poker chip formations. There were also some pockets with the calcite that resembles cavelike formations, most of those I left there due to damage to them.

…I filled another bag here, giving me a total of six bags, five at the new blast pile…and many yard rocks…by this time I was ready to leave and head home to get a nap in and grab some dinner. First I had to drive back over to the western side of the new pile to load up the crystals I stacked up on the edge….

I was a bit soaked from the light rain that had begun to fall shortly after we arrived, and Onyx had stayed in the truck when I got over the coved wall area…by the time we were leaving, he was nearly all dry once again. I changed shirts and into my street shoes before leaving, planning to stop off and see a new miner friend on my return, not wanting to track mud into his house….he had some interesting pieces that I had not seen before, and I was able to pick up a few of them from him, one was a very small set of twin calcite crystals with malachite color at the base of the crystals. I`ll get a photo of it posted soon as well.

Thru the week, I received emails from Nathaniel and Chuck, both asking if I intended to drive down there again the next weekend…I had a couple of holidays to burn before the end of the year, so I took Sunday off to make the return trip. Nathaniel rode down with Onyx and I, while Chuck and his daughter Mackenzie, took the scenic route to arrive shortly after Nathaniel and I did. It was Mackenzie`s first time there and I think she was pretty impressed with the place. Nathaniel and I had only been there a short while before they pulled in, enough time for me to scout out some floor pockets for her to check out, with some nice looking loose crystals and small clusters laying on the surface. She and Chuck started digging in when I pointed it out to them…while Nathaniel took off to check out the coved wall pile, which looked much the same as it did the weekend before when I was there. He climbed up the right side of the pile and was checking out wall pockets when I glanced over there about an hour later. For whatever reason, probably because I simply forgot, I did not take any photos at all that day, but I can tell you that we all did well…I only filled one bag with crystals that I found, but they were very nice crystals and plates from a few pockets that I discovered down the east wall…and after picking up a few plates, I called Chuck over and let him work the rest of the plates out of it. There were a lot of druse pockets along the wall as well and I pulled a few nice plates of those out as well as some druse pieces with poker chips attached to them….those always make beautiful sparkly plates to display…I have about four shelves of them at home…they glitter in the light like you would not believe, and are second to dogtooths in my book. By 1:30 pm, we were tired and happy, and headed up the road to see one of my miner friends to see some new material…both Nathaniel and Chuck wanted to get some nice Viburnum Trend minerals and we were able to do just that. I`ll get some of those posted soon as well. This weekend I took advantage of the beautiful unseasonably warm weather for December to move some rocks around in the backyard and made room for more. Today while it was raining outside, I high graded my crystals on the inside and made room for more that I have collected recently, including my Arkansas quartz crystals.

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

New Addition to my Rock Garden

Posted on July 12, 2015 by jwj

One of the last trips Missy made with me was down to St Louis County to pick up a huge Dogtooth Calcite Crystal Cluster with Chalcopyrite and Galena Lead attached to it, that a guy was selling…he was downsizing from a house to an apartment and could not take it with him…he had purchased it from a friend of mine at the Park Hills Show a few years ago and had it in his front flower garden. He had told me it was quite heavy and recommended that I bring someone with me to help lift it into my truck, so I contacted my nephew Zack and he said he would be glad to help me with it. I picked up Zack at Eureka and drove on over to Dennis` residence in Fenton to pick it up. I backed up my truck into his driveway as close as I could get, which left about twenty feet for Zack and I to carry it…luckily that was as far as we had to go with it, cause Dennis was right, it was pretty darn heavy with all that galena lead attached to it, and we had to handle it carefully due to all the crystals on the front face of it…it measures about 18 to 20 inches high and about 15 inches wide, at least ten inches thick, if not more. Luckily Zack had his wheaties that morning and was able to help me lift it just fine. My neighbor Glenn helped me unload it when I returned home with it, and I was able to get the truck quite close to the spot I intended to set it down at…here it is in that spot on display….

Fletcher Mine Additions to My Collection

Posted on July 12, 2015 by jwj

I picked up some beautiful calcites and chalcopyrite to add to my collection back in May from my friend Dave….

…then a few weeks later, he let me know that he had some stuff in that was even prettier, double terminated calcite crystals many of them three to four inches in length, and surrounded by, even embedded in clusters of gorgeous pyrite !! I had to go take a look and to say I was astounded would be an understatement….

…so here is what my collection from the Doe Run Mines looks like now…well should say this is one countertop out of five now….

…then there is this shelf as well…..

…as this one….

..and then I changed the first one around a little….

…hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do…I picked up another batch of them from him on Friday, do not have them photographed just yet, not even unwrapped yet…but I will get there eventually. 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Armadillo Day at MFQ

Posted on July 28, 2014 by jwj

As usual, I am behind again on my posts and so am taking the time to catch up today. I worked on editing images all afternoon and then had to rest my eyes for a bit before taking up the task of putting the story together with the photos. In the past six weeks, I have been busy with some family matters , work issues, and yardwork while we had rain. I have also traveled a bit to do some rock collecting, and except for one day a few weeks ago, I didn`t find much of anything worth writing home about, until yesterday…when I had a great day of rock hunting and collecting. Today was rest up, recover, and catch up day, and so I did.

Friday afternoon, Missy and I drove down to Arcadia, Missouri, to check out an older collection of Doe Run minerals, that a resident there wanted to sell. I had been in contact with the guy for a few weeks, trying to work in a time when I could get down there and he would be available to show me his collection. He told me that he had about eighty pieces in his collection, and I had seen a few photos of the collection and liked what I had seen, so I was a bit excited as I arrived there. Once inside however, it was a different story…for one thing, I only saw maybe thirty pieces in the display case and they were covered in dust and very dirty, even cobwebs were strung out all over the minerals on the shelves, making it very hard to see exactly what was even in his collection. He had a few pieces with chalcopyrite, but they had oxidized so badly, I couldn`t see any color at all, even what little pyrite I saw was dull colored. He had inherited his collection from his grandfather who worked in a couple of the Doe Run mines, and I quickly found out the value he placed on it was sentimental value alone, which no one can afford. As it was, after making the drive down there, I did purchase a few of his pieces, but that was all…..I was quite disappointed and almost felt as if I had wasted my time.

Missy and I got up early Saturday morning and drove down to MFQ, after I received a call Tuesday night at work from my buddy Jim, who told me that there was some new activity there earlier that day, near the coved wall. I was looking forward to seeing what could be found, as that wall has produced alot of pretty crystals in the past couple of years. Usually it starts getting light about 5:30 am, but each time I glanced to the east, all I saw were a low line of dark blue clouds as we traveled down the road. Only as I got close, did the sun finally make a beautiful appearance, in the form of a large fireball from the clouds…if you look close, you`ll notice the crescent moon just above the sun as well…..

…then a few minutes later, there were sunbeams as well….

We arrived shortly after, and after gearing up, I started walking around the base of the new pile, which was smaller than I had anticipated, but I had to stop and remember that this happened Tuesday morning and staff had been working the pile since then…

I had actually let a few of my rockhunting buddies know about it as well, and a couple of them had considered making the drive up there as well. After walking around the new pile for about the first hour, I texted them and told them not to waste their time because in that hour, I only located one single crystal and no wall pockets either. I`m not saying there were no crystals there…it`s likely there were, but they were prob buried underneath all the rubble, too. It was starting to look like a bust for me, which would be the first time since I have never had a bad day of collecting down there yet. I took a water bottle break and then drove over to the prior pile…which they had used to create a ramp up……

….to the benched top of it….

I had been up on that bench a few weeks back and found just a few pockets with some nice calcite druse and poker chips mixed in, some of them had some nice dogtooth crystals as well…. on a Saturday, and then the next day I drove down to a location that a good friend of mine had told me about last year…I refer to it as the new secret spot….a location that has proven to be a very good place to find some great clusters of crystals, especially dogtooth crystals…on that particular day a few weeks ago, I def found something worth writing home about, but have chosen not to until recently when I told a few close friends about it. Suffice to say, I had a field day that day and brought home several canvas bags full of wrapped goodies, clusters, singles, twins, triples, all bright orange dogtooth crystals, from micro size to beachball sized, many of each. It`s been a few weeks and I am still cleaning many of them. I`ll post some photos of them when I get them cleaned up…I had a few of them cleaned up and on display when some new rock collecting friends showed up last week for a visit, and they were pretty impressed with them as well.

I decided not to climb up the bench ramp again this time, and walked around the base to see if I could spot any crystals that had rolled down the walls, that might indicate a pocket nearby. Within a few minutes, I spotted a couple of boulders embedded in the sloped wall, and it appeared that someone had found some druse in a pocket under the left boulder. I did some exploring and suddenly discovered some poker chips under the boulder on the right side….

…I dug down and around the bottom of that boulder and tried to dig out the right side, but the upper slope material kept sliding down and getting in the way, so I moved to the left of it and pulled bigger rocks and loose stuff away to find a large opening between the two boulders, which opened up into a large void between the two large boulders…

…it appeared to me that someone may have dug under the boulder on the right, but didn`t follow up…. in my estimation, since I soon began pulling out some beautiful plates…here is the opening between the boulders…

….I went back to the truck and brought back my flashlight and when I shined the light down into that pocket, I saw very shiny calcite druse all over the ceiling and walls and lots of pieces and plates with the same druse all over them, including some with poker chips attached to them….here are a few that I was able to reach as soon as I spotted them with the light….

…I then stuck my camera down into the cavern and snapped a couple of photos to show you what the interior of it looked like…the photos you are about to see do not do it justice….

…that big one at the bottom that you see in the photo, I had to pull it out thru that opening so that I could pull out some more plates that were located behind it…by this time I had removed more of the loose dirt and rock underneath me so that I could more easily, reach into that cavern and grab more plates…soon my arms were all scratched up and I felt more like an armadillo, digging my way in between those boulders…which by the way, were firmly entrenched and embedded into that sloped wall, deeply entrenched and attached to the wall behind it…the void appeared to be about six feet long and four feet wide and every bit of thirty inches high. The big piece you see above, was very pretty on the side facing away from me, covered in calcite druse with a big poker chip attached to one corner of it. Here are some more of the goodies I pulled out once it was clear of the void…

…one of the prettiest plates I pulled out was sitting right in front of the big one that was blocking me, plate sized and a few inches thick with calcite druse in three colors and poker chips embedded in it….

…a few of these plates even had dogtooth crystals on them…the following image shows about half of my haul from this pocket alone…

…after two hours on this pocket, I was ready for another bottle of cold water and I decided to wrap everything up and load it in the truck bed, and then evaluate to see how tired I was….the temps were climbing by now and the little shade I had by the boulders was just about gone and I had cleaned out the pocket quite well. After wrapping them all up, I had three bags completely full and then wrapped up ten large ones as well, basketball sized. I decided that I had a little more energy left and moved further east along the wall, looking for more potential for pockets…and soon found an area that I had once found several pockets, some filled with druse, but beautiful druse and sometimes when I find those druse pockets, I find poker chips attached to the druse as well….yesterday, I found two more pockets of the druse with poker chips attached…I had to do a bit more burrowing in like an armadillo again, but managed to do so safely again and filled two more bags with goodies, before finally wearing out…the temps had to be near 95 now and the humidity was getting bad as well. Jim and his wife stopped by to chat for a minute, they too were tired of the heat and headed to the river to sit and soak in it. Missy had been inside my truck in the ac for the past hour and I soon joined her.

I drove to the top of the parking lot and called a friend of mine, who is a mineral dealer nearby, he specializes in Viburnum Trend minerals, and I asked him if he had any new material. He said he did and I decided to drive up to his place and take a look. Boy, am I glad that I did drive up there because he had some gorgeous green and yellow calcite crystals attached to the blackest rock I have ever seen, many of the crystals were double terminated and some even skeletal looking, some with phantoms inside them, spectacular and breathtaking at the same time…they had come from the Fletcher Mine and since I didn`t have anything in my collection from the Fletcher Mine, I purchased a few from him….

…and this next one features a single calcite crystal attached to a chunk of dolomite covered by a quartz druse and some galena cubes spread out in the quartz….

…and this gorgeous piece of chalcopyrite that has multiple colors and is covered by a fine dusting of quartz as well…

…he had several of each one…most of my chalcopyrite has large chunks of it on the matrix, but this stuff was more like a dusting of smaller particles of color and covered with a dusting of quartz as well, just spectacular pieces, bit and small. I brought home a few boxes of material from him and so yesterday was a great day of hunting and collecting for me. I can`t wait to add these to my new display cases, but for now that gorgeous chalcopyrite piece is sitting here next to my computer for me to visually enjoy for a few days. 🙂