How It All Got Started - part 1
A lot of people at gem shows ask me how I got to the point where I am at with all the mineral, fossil, and meteorites that I have for sale. I thought I would finally get around to answering that question.
In high school in the 1980’s I was a quiet kid that was on the verge of getting in a lot of trouble. My dad knowing that I had always had a love for the outdoors and geology took me on my first major collecting trip to the eastern half of Pennsylvania. During that trip we went to some classic collecting localities that are no longer open to the public.
On the first day at the Faylor-Middlecreek Quarry where we collected some great Strontianite, Calcite and Celestite crystals. On this first day of our multi-site trip, I hit my thumb with a crack hammer that chipped the bone by the knuckle and caused it to lock up. But I was having too much fun to call it quits, after all there were still a lot of other locations to go to that week. (Be honest most of us have been at that point where we probably should have called it quits but the collecting was just too good or we were having too much fun!) After spending the night at a campground we collected Magnetite, Pyrite, Hematite, etc. at the French Creek mine dumps. (From what I understand that place has long since been closed to collecting.) On this same trip we collected all the pink Dolomite crystals we could carry (If the crystals were dirty we left them. There was just that much and we were the only ones there.) Next we had the opportunity to collect Pyromorphite (now what collector would turn down an opportunity to collect that mineral!) at one of the Phoenixville Mine dumps (now closed and covered over).
After a great week of collecting and camping with my dad we called it a wrap and headed home in our Oldsmobile Delta 88 with the rear end almost dragging the ground due to all the pieces we brought back. I will never forget my mom’s reaction to seeing the car pull into the driveway. She said, “What did you guys bring back? It looks like the whole quarry.”
Well I will never forget that week as it started the passion and love that I now have for minerals, fossils and meteorites. I wish I could say I have had many collecting trips as successful as this one, who knows maybe one day I will, but even though I have had some great finds over the years that trip we seemed to hit almost every location at the best time. How often do you leave crystals just because they have mud on them that could easily be washed off? We could have easily filled a small box truck with everything that was there. So this is the trip that started it all. In my next post I will tell you how the business got started.
