Minerals, Crystals & Fossils

Some of the larger items in the collection

Introduction to my Collecting
 It all started with a small gift from my seven year old sister. She had been on her first school trip and she used her spending money to buy everyone a small gift. My gift was a rock sample pictured on the right in a display box which obviously had some sentimental value.
Nothing more happened for a number of years then purely by chance I came across a stall at an event I was attending and they had a few similar mineral and crystal samples for sale and I bought a few, my collection had started.
My small collection was put on display in a prominent position in the room, a few friends noticed it and quite soon people were bringing me gifts of rocks and crystals whenever it was my birthday, Christmas or when they came back from their holidays. My collection was starting to grow and was attracting even more attention then ever before. Once I realised that I had all the makings of a real collection I began to look around to add to the collection myself, I even purchased a few books on the subject so that I might be able to identify the unknown samples in my fast growing collection. Then one day while out on my bike I called in at a small shop in Haworth (Bronte country) and I simply couldn't believe my eyes, there in front of me was the largest collection of fossils minerals and crystals that I had ever seen, and they were all for sale.
Needless to say but this became a very regular journey for me to make and I would regularly bring home five or six new samples on a weekly basis. This caused a small problem, my collection was now so large that it could no longer be displayed properly in it's original location, so I made several areas available for the collection and built some shelving for it all.
Things have gone on like this now for the last several years and there is no sign of any slow down although I am now becoming more selective and have a few target specimens in mind although chance purchases still occur with great regularity.
The latest addition to my collection is a gold nugget pictured on the left given to me just this Christmas by Michelle, it had been a long standing target specimen of mine and one that I was beginning to think that I'd never actually get after spending so much time looking for one over the last few years. So here are my oldest and newest parts of my collection, but there is plenty more in between.

These are some of the many samples in the collection. The top row is mainly precious and semi precious stones and includes diamonds (well one anyway), rubies, emeralds, sapphires, opal, garnet, gold ect. The second row is for the more brightly coloured minerals ( yes I know, not very scientific, but it looks nice.) and includes Turquoise, Lapis Lazuli, Amazon Stone, Snowflake Obsidian, Jade, Jasper and far to many more to list them all. The third row is mainly the various colours of Quartz, such as Citrine, Amethyst, along with some Quartz look a likes. Forth row is reserved for the 'violent' rocks, Meteorites, volcanic rocks ect. The collection also includes a selection of metallic ores which aren't pictured.

Amber

Bartite

Peacock Ore

Rhodochrosite

Lapis Lazuli