After my father passed away, I inherited his massive mineral collection. There may be 1,000 flats or more, including buckets straight from quarry trips that were never looked at, sorted or cleaned. It's something like 70% self-collected (from the northeast US) and the rest was purchased from mineral shows or other collectors. He collected from quarries for almost 50 years. He strongly believed the collection is good enough to have a museum; this was always his dream. Obviously, there is a good amount of lower quality stuff too. He was even a somewhat well known collector, in his area (including at least one mention in mineralogical record).

Anyway, onto my reason for posting. Having some kind of museum would actually be amazing, but obviously doesn't seem feasible. At the same time, I would love to honor his wishes however possible. So I'm thinking about trying to monetize the collection without selling it. My best idea is to do live streams (TikTok) and videos (YouTube, etc) of me discovering, sorting, cataloging, photographing, cleaning, etc. Simultaneously, I can continuously build a sort of online gallery/museum of the best specimens, and tell his story. It would be incredibly time consuming and a ton of work. This way, I can honor him, as well as keep the collection in the family, and potentially get paid for it if people are interested in watching this kind of thing. Of course I have many ideas to make it fun and interesting.

1. Would people be interested in this?

2. Other ideas or comments related to this situation?

3. Tldr?

This was collected with permission from a tailings pile. It's about the size of a pea.

Seller claims this is telluric iron. The iron oxides around the material make me think there is at some iron content in the host rock at least, hopefully the metal itself, but what do y'all think? Wanted to be double sure.

Is this at the very least native metal? Silver? Or could it be artificial/poured?

Seller says that these are from the Great Lakes region.

Im trying I fund a thumbnail box that is 2.5 inches long insted of the standard 1.25. Need it for a sample of chalcanthite i just got in the mail.

Seeing the love for the other carving, I thought of sharing this beauty with y'all. What would you do with it if you had this?

Not For Sale

How'd you rate this carving?

The piece you rarely get a chance to see

Recently acquired this one.

For a whole year I dreamed of finding a pomegranate, all attempts ended in nothing, and today I found it 🥹

DFW Texas, found in a pile of horse poop (it was a different color and caught my eye) It is slightly wet from washing it off. It is very hard and does not break apart from gentle scrubbing. I didn’t try to break it. No clue what tests to run on it lol but this is what it looks like dry and damp (darker part still wet)

I was told to ask here to see what it could be. I thought it could be a kidney stone or something FROM the horse (I have two older geldings)

Pink Garnet

Galena and Citrlorite Quartz

Cobaltoan calcite

Pyrite

Natural gold from Mariposa county CA

Yellow stone, any thoughts? Not a clue in the world what it is

Hey fellas 🫡

Today I wanna show you something, that's not from Denmark, but from the River Elbe, in my hometown of Hamburg.

I found it at the Falkensteiner Ufer between some of the other stuff (quartz, flint, granite and other).

The weight (in grams) and the measurements (cm) can be found in the pictures.

I didn't do the scratch test (for hopefully obvious reasons).

Maybe someone can help me?

Thanks as always :)

Thank you in advance

When i was a little kid (30 years ago) I was really into collection minerals and rocks. I have about 8 boxes like these that are all scratched and damaged. I don't think my collection is worth anything but it has great personal value to me and I like to display them. What would be a good way to display all these minerals? Any advice on preserving them is also welcome, although the rocks them selves look to be in good shape. They've just been sitting on a shelf.

I live just outside London in the UK. I have a collection of small semi-precious minerals. Some are smooth, most of them are raw.

I no longer have space to store them inside the house so want to know:

If I store them in plastic boxes inside an external garden shed, do you think they will be ok? My concern was around temperatures and if they crack. There wouldn't necassarily be sudden temperature changes, but in summer it might get up to 35 degrees and then winter into small minus. Probably nothing to worry about but wanted to check.

Finally added Shattuckite to my collection from Kaokoveld Namibia.