What's your favorite mineral? Mines monazite. REE phosphorous mineral

What's your favorite mineral? Mines monazite. REE phosphorous mineral.

Corundum

Lurking

...

Personally, Quartz, simply because it's such a versatile mineral, there's so many varieties, it's extremely common, and has incredible inclusions. Fluorite following that (much like quartz, incredible variety and color), and I'd say Tourmaline as well.

Beautiful Tourmaline, one of my favorites as well. Looks like it has some Lepidolite (the purple stuff) growing on the sides as well.

Also, gonna post a few minerals from my parent's collection since this is a mineral thread. I'm no expert and I can't identify everything, so maybe you guys could help. They're actually coming back from Tucson, Arizona tomorrow after buying even more minerals there, both to sell and for their own collection.

First up, Quartz with blue inclusion mineral, I'm not sure what it is and I can't find the placard for this specimen, I think it has some ajoite in it though.

Here's some Ajoite in quartz, probably my mother's favorite one. I think they paid a few grand for this specimen alone. They tell me Ajoite only comes from a few specific locations, I think in Brazil, and is very rare. Some finer specimens sell for tens of thousands / hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here's some Fluorite, they have quite a lot of it in their collection, this one's one of my favorites.

Another, smaller single quartz crystal with Ajoite. This one is beautiful, very deep color compared to most of the other specimens my parents bought.

I'm pretty sure that the light blue here is fluorite, with some clear quartz. I'm not sure what the pink mineral is however.

Same goes for this one, nevertheless, it's beautiful.

No idea what this is either, though the crystal structure looks very similar to the pink minerals above.

Smokey quartz coated with some kind of iridescent layer. I'm not sure if this is natural or artificial, as i've seen many shitty quartz crystals get electroplated to sell them to dumb hippies. That said, I would lean more towards natural since the entire thing isn't covered in it.

This is some Beryl, specifically aquamarine. You can find aquamarines much deeper in color than this, but I still like it a lot.

Another example of ajoite in quartz, slightly larger than the deeper color one above.

This is more quartz, not sure what the inclusions in it are, but they are very thin, gold and needle-like.

Here's a small watermelon tourmaline, nothing like the one posted above though, this one is pretty cheap.

calculus because fuck you

>anything but zircon

Kek

I dread the day I get those fuckers.

Anyways this is a huge quartz crystal, with the same blue inclusions as above. It's coated in a dark blue metallic mineral, as well as some yellow stuff that looks like a yellow mineral (sulfur maybe?).

Smokey Quartz with microcline, a potassium feldspar.

These ones are really cool, quartz with a bunch of smaller quartz growths covering the large crystals.

From what I remember in geology classes, Zircon crystals from places like Australia are some of the oldest crystals on Earth, and have been used to radio-metrically date the Earth.

This one is Ametrine, it's a quartz that has amethyst citrine in it.

forgot the image

Some blue fluorite.

Amethyst and green Fluorite on the back.

These are tiny, but when you look at them with a magnifying lens they look incredible.

A single, deep purple Amethyst crystal.

I think this is Arkansas Quartz, some of the most clear Quartz crystals in the world.

If I remember correctly this is a Calcite crystal growing out of an Amethyst, one of my favorite, my mom picked up about a dozen of these to sell.

This is Fluorite in what I think is Galena, a lead mineral, but I'm not 100% positive.

This one is awesome, a very large Fluorite with a ton of variety in color.

Last one for tonight, another Fluorite. If this thread is still active I'll post more tomorrow, my parents have a fuck-huge collection of minerals. They're bringing back even more tomorrow from Tucson.

people crap on pyrite because "fools gold" but it makes some of the best crystals

Just realized the included blue mineral in here is Papagoite, a mineral very similar to ajoite.

jesus christ marie theyre not rocks

Don't mind me, just bumping this thread with some more minerals. This one is Malachite, normally you see a lot of people selling polished Malachite / Azurite, as it layers similar to Chalcedony and looks really neat once cut and polished. This one's obviously not cut or polished.

...

No one craps on Pyrite in mineral circles, Pyrite is an awesome looking mineral. I don't have many specimens of it though, a few small cubic pyrites, though I do have a lot of minerals that contain chalcopyrite, a mineral similar to pyrite but with a different crystal and chemical structure. Pic related, a large Fluorite crystal with specks of chalcopyrite on it.

Ah yes, Cummingtonite, lots and lots of old and stale jokes about that in my mineralogy classes... See also """"jokes"""" involving my Apatite, or being a "pyrite" or what a gneiss day it is outside or some shit like that.

Here's a somewhat gemmy quality Aquamarine.

This one is neat, it's a large smoky quartz crystal with a twinned smokey / amethyst on the tip.

Smokey quartz and amethyst on calcite. I'm not sure what this structure is called, on the smokey quartz, but it's really cool. We have a bunch of these.

This is a large amethyst with a "cathedral"-like structure, I really like these, and they're very easy to sell.

This I think is a pegmatitic rock, containing quartz, albite, as well as some schorl (black variety of tourmaline).

Pegmatites are really interesting, I got the opportunity to go up to Maine a few years ago and visit some pegmatite mines, where they mine some of the most beautiful Tourmalines I've ever seen. One of my former professors now works at a mineral museum up there.

Another example of this weird structure on smokey quartz, love the way these things look.

Another yellow fluorite with small specks of chalcopyrite sprinkled all over it.

Not sure what's going on with this one, maybe weathering or replacement in the fluorite with another mineral, or maybe just some inclusion of calcite or something.

More fluorite, not sure what the greyish-green crystals are, but it has some muscovite on the bottom.

Here's an example of how you commonly find twinning in quartz.

Another example of Arkansas Quartz, this stuff is crystal clear up close.

I think this is fluorite as well, not sure what the matrix is, but I spot some Muscovite here and there.

More fluorite. So much fluorite...

Something different... Green Gypsum.

Here's some Garnets.

Some Ajoite that's not included in a quartz crystal.

Nope, this isn't Quartz, it's calcite!

Rate my minerals I found the bottom 3.

Dunno what the bottom right is, top and bottom surfaces are opaque rocky while middle is a translucent crystal

A very deep red Elbaite, a variety of Tourmaline.

Top row is native copper crystals, some Calcite, and unsure what the far right stuff is, probably more calcite maybe?

I'm not sure what the middle one is, could be calcite, do a streak test or see how hard it is. Some opal maybe on the right, and obsidian, which is volcanic glass, forms when the minerals cool so fast they don't have time to crystallize.

More examples of Ajoite in Quartz. These are beautiful and very rare, as I mentioned above.

Another Elbaite crystal, actually terminated well at the top of the crystal.

I think this is Malachite in between some red quartz crystals.

Not sure what's going on with this amethyst, but it looks awesome.

Just some more really neat looking smokey quartz crystals.

This thing is called a sceptre quartz.

This is another sceptre amethyst, it looks blurry but it's not out of focus, that's how it looks in person.

More amethyst... my mom has a shit ton of it. Nevertheless, they are beautiful.

Surprise, more smokey quartz, with some amethyst mixed in.

I have absolutely no idea what this is.

Another amethyst again...

You can never have too much amethyst.

Last one for now. I'm gonna go take some more pictures this afternoon.

desu a thread like this wold get more attention in /hr/ or /wg/

most of the ones i wanted to pick are already posted, but here's some chrysoberyl.

/hr/ is basically just female celebrity worship, and none of these are really /wg/ type images, but yeah, just using this thread as an excuse to post some minerals anyways, been wanting to use my lightbox to photograph some for a long time anyways, so it's just giving me an excuse.

Anyways took a few more pictures, here's a bunch of different tourmalines, the red-pink stuff I think is Wulfenite.

A few more Tourmalines and a Beryl or two.

Can you write Veeky Forums with minerals?

tormuline as the forwardslash at least

For what purpose?

I'm not sure what this is, but it's neat.

honestly probably just for my wallpapers folder. if you dont have good shaped minerals for it than nevermind.

i have a /v/ wallpaper, a /g/ wallpaper. would like a Veeky Forums one

It's shitty, but here you go.

I got a few more pictures I'll post too. Another twinned Smokey quartz.

I think this is Wulfenite too, there are many colored varieties of it.

Here's a tiny Topaz. I've been trying to talk my parents into getting some larger specimens, but good ones are quite pricey.

Fluoroapatite, large specimens of this mineral are stunning, and pretty expensive.

>tfw beryl

This is Thunder bay Amethyst from Ontario, Canada.

kek

Here's another one I'm not sure of.

They all look like boiled sweets or lollipops. I want to lick them. They should make actual sweets that look like this - people would buy them.

...

Some more Garnets.

Wish I knew what these were.

A nice big piece of small smokey quartz crystals.

More amethyst, like I said, we have a shit ton of amethyst specimens.

Another ajoite in quartz.

haha thanks so much. Close to 1000 wallpapers and that makes a great addition.

no problem

this is actually a giant mass of sour apple gummy bears mashed together

Finally you got it right, Marie

wow! i like this one, thanks for posting this

Believe it or not, I'm pretty sure this is naturally oxidized chalcopyrite. You can see some of it (the gold parts) that wasn't oxidized.

You know that scene where he gets a truckload delivery of minerals in the mail?

That's literally my parents right now as they drive back from Tucson, half the bed of their truck is boxes of minerals.

They used to just ship things back to our house on pallets though.

No problem, Malachite is actually relatively inexpensive, even high quality ones like that.

I have something similar to this, not sure what it is.

...