Somewhere between my high-school years and today, I lost a box of rocks. There were several specimens in it that I can still recall acutely, one of which was spodumene collected from a New England pegmatite. The spodumene photo I have in the mineral gallery, from the USGS, doesn't do it justice. My specimen was glittery as well as streaky, with a faint lilac hue that helped it stand out from the chunky quartz and platy feldspar around it. Of course nobody sells such things in rock shops; you have to find them yourself or trade with somebody. This nice clear lilac piece of spodumene came from a mine and is not typical of what you'll see in the field.
What minerals have you lost?
Kunzite, or pink/lilac spodumene — Geology Guide photo
Reposted from 2 April 2010
Comments
We have a big spodumene specimen on display here, and when my brother (a geology major) visited, he drooled over it and politely mentioned that I could accidentally break the glass and the spodumene could accidentally disappear into his collection. Don’t worry, the spodumene is still here.
I loaned a box of specimens from my undergraduate mapping area in Lukmanierpass, Switzerland to a metamorphic geology lecturer at a previous university. Samples included some beautiful white kyanite and some stunning garnet-rich hornblende garbenschiefer. Never did get them back.
I found a piece of what I now know was shocked glass from the Yucatan. Found this out taking a geology class. It could have been from THE Meteorite. It disappeared during a move. Why is it that something always goes missing when you move? I’m thinking they most go to that big hole in the back of the clothes dryer, you know, where your missing socks go!
My Mother threw out my rock and soil collection when I was 12. I always wondered how my life would have been different if I had gotten a little mentoring and encouragement as a youngster. I find the gelogy here and what we are finding on other planets exciting.
We moved from a house to a small apartment in August. I had to give away, sell, and leave at the house most of the larger rocks in my collection, many of which I found in CO. Sad. I got to keep those that fit in 2 display cabinets & storage units.
Over the years I’ve built and lost several rock collections. At least one end up in a rock garden at my parents’ lake cabin south of Omaha. A thousand years from now some bright young geo-student will wonder how pegmatite from Colorado and galena samples from Missouri got into a sand deposit in eastern Nebraska. It will be a mineralogical puzzle.
I gave my collection to my friend’s wife who teaches at a local elementary school. It included a nice specimens of brachiopods and protooysters that I collected on one of the late Dr. John Cooper field trips. I also had some double terminated drusy quartz crystal on dolomite from Palos Verdes peninsula
I had a cousin who had a rock shop in New Mexico and he gave me a chunk of gold ore when I was about 10. Somehow, over the years that rock and many others have disappeared. But since they were never mine in the first place…I can let them go and hope that some other child will get to hold them, wonder about them and possibly pursue the likelihood of having a pocket full of rocks. I am well past that childhood only in years…I still pick up and carry rocks in my pockets.
I lost an awesome sphene (titanite) crystal that I found in the Sierras… as big as your pinky! My prof said it was museum quality… damn!
Someone lost a small box of what must have been his/her pickings of the day in a wooded area of Tirol. Friends of mine found it and brought it to me for my collection. Among lovely tidbits is an awesome smoky quartz piece covered with limonite. It’s great to have it, though I suffer for the other’s loss!
We – the geological community in the UK – have all lost minerals from their field locations because of the ‘ebay’ trade. I took my family to look at garnets within a metamorphic zone in Scotland that I had been shown on a University field trip – they had been cut out. Many field trip organisers are increasingly reluctant to show off good examples at some locations being aware that it will result in their destruction.
a nice chunk of crystal precious opal, which I paid $75 for
I’m sure it’s in some ultra-safe place.
I found a lovely corundum on a field trip in north Ga. I had no pockets, so put the 2 inch piece in my bra. The first time I bent over to pick up another rock, the corundum jumped out and ran.
A nice big garnet, embedded in a rock. Found it when a kid in NC. Wish I knew where that darn thing went to!
A childhood neighbor boy threw out a piece of red slate and it broke, revealing a perfect fern imprint, positive and negative. I used it for years teaching school, and among the moves, it disappeared. But I haven’t unpacked all the boxes yet…..
My entire childhood collection. I have no idea how it disappeared during a move. There was a collectors set of “Rocks and Minerals” that was mounted on a card with a bright yellow folded instruction sheet from Britain in the 1950s or early 60s. It had limestone & sandstone etc. but it meant so much to me! I was fascinated by the obsidian.
There was also the small sample of limestone I swapped for at school as it had a small fossil in it and the sample of “Blue John” I obtained the same way.
There was also a bag with a couple of samples bought from Alton Towers with the very last of my pocket money (25p & 35p, a lot of money for a kid in the early 70s). I also had a tub of small polished beach pebbles, some were bright red and nothing like any I’d seen in Britain – 55p!
The rest of the bag were picked from the beaches around Britain on our holidays, So many were really nice or unusual. No real value, but enormous sentimental value, especially as now everyone else has died.
Finally, there were the only two true real finds of my own (we never went anywhere where I could look for interesting specimins in situ). But I DID find a wonderful fossil of part of a leaf in anthracite in my Grandparent’s coal bunker. The other one was some weathered anthracite from a field where the Easter fair was held each year in Daisy Nook (Manchester, England). We were trying out a metal detector, but it just sounded continuously. I was intrigued and picked up some pieces of “rock”. They set the detector off instantly, so probably had a high iron content? They were badly weathered & ashen grey, but I was sure they were coal. My family did not believe me and told me not to do it, but I brought some back. I kept the more interesting pieces and put the rest on my Grandparent’s coal fire, where they burnt quite happily.
I really miss my little collection of (to me) oddities.
I grew up near Great Falls Montana on property of the Anaconda Company. My fiends and I sometimes played in rough land between company housing and the main smelter. There was a little gulch near the company golf course. One day I happened to be there (doing who-knows-what ) and some blocks of red clayey rock caught my eye. I noticed some smooth lumps on one. I picked around and dug out what looked like a bone about a foot long, joints on both ends, solid and heavy. I also got a couple of smaller ones, finger size.
I packed these things in paper in a shoe box and took them to my junior high biology teacher.
Having made my contribution to paleontology I forgot about the bones for a while. A couple of years later I was at the same school for an open-house: my younger sister was a student there. I saw the same teacher and asked him what he had done with with my find.
He said he didn’t remember anything about it.
(If anyone wants to go search that gulch, go to 47.52297, -111.265621.) Hide the picks and shovels in your golf bag.