April 15, 2008
by Ray Hill
I have had the privilege of going out rock hunting with many folks in recent years. Some of the people that went with me are knowledgeable and have been at it for a long time and a few are just beginners. I personally have been going on collecting trips for about twenty years now. I can think of no other hobby I would rather be involved in. Rock collecting has brought me many hours of enjoyment and has put me in contact with some really great people over the years.
I think one thing about this hobby that all of us enjoy is being able to share, or show off our collections to others. I know I do. It brings me great pleasure when someone comes into my office and comments on all the pretty rocks on display. After all, being able to brag a little about what you have done is icing on the cake, so to speak. It certainly makes the effort worthwhile.
And, one thing that amazes me is the fact that there are many collectors that like going on the field trips and getting buckets of rocks, then bring them home and do nothing with them. The material ends up sitting in boxes or buckets in the basement or garage for ever and ever. They have not taken the time to get the material they have found organized in any manner. Ive been to another rock collectors house and when I asked to see their collection they would take me out to the back yard and show me the rocks laying around the flower beds or maybe show me buckets of material, with spider webs and dust covering the tops, out in the garage. I think to myself, This isnt much of a collection! It is just a bunch of rocks. There is no organization to it.
Now, I know that rockhounds are a varied bunch. They have different backgrounds, educations, experiences, incomes, etc. I understand. One person may be into tumbling or cutting stones for jewelry while another is thrilled about a different facet of the hobby (Pun intended!) like fossils, meteorites, doing inlay work or whatever.
But one thing I dont understand is the collector not having some kind of organization for the material they collect. It may be that some folks are not interested in showing off their finds, or dont know how to organize the material theyve collected. Its my humble opinion that you dont have a collection in the true sense of the word unless you have your material organized where you know what you have and where it came from. And, by the way, not having your rocks organized, identified with name and location, greatly reduces its value.
In the past 20 years I have had a number of people contact me and say they have a rock collection that was collected by their father, aunt, uncle, or whatever, and wanted to know if I would look at it and give them an idea as to the worth of the material and to see if maybe I would like to purchase the material. When they brought the material over, I didnt think much of it because of the condition it was in. There would be no labels on any of the material and they would not know where the material came from. Its just some rocks Dad collected they would say.
You can take common road gravel, put it in a small box with an attractive description label giving the name of the rock, where it came from, maybe the type rock (Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic), the hardness of the rock, and maybe the date it was found, and low-and-behold, it now has a value. It’s no longer just common road gravel! It is now a cataloged specimen in a collection. The rock now has character! It is now an identified, marked, labeled specimen, with value.
Recently, one of my Rock Buddies and I went over to a site within a couple of miles of my home where workers were doing some heavy grading of a large lot that was going to be a Super WalMart. It was late in the evening and none of the workers were around so we looked through the material they were bringing out of the ground with their heavy equipment. We found large quantities of a metamorphic rock, biotite mica schist. See Biotite Mica Schist. We both loaded up as much of this material as we could tote away that evening. The next day, I got outside on my rock bench with this material and a hammer and chisel. I put together three flats of this material in three different sizes. I put the specimens into the fold-up boxes and typed nice description labels for them. My daughter photographed the material and we put it up on our site. This was last summer. To date, we have sold about three hundred dollars worth of this mica. We were able to do this because we made nice size mineral specimens out of the large chunks, put the pieces into small display boxes, put description cards with each specimen and turned the material into good collectable specimens. Just a pile of rocks by themselves do not make collectable specimens.
Courtesy of Great South Gems and Minerals
