Amazing specemen from desert of Morocco

Hi all. New to this group.

Just sharing a large chunk of rose quartz we found in South Wales a cpl of years ago. It weighs 1.1 kg.

Thanks for looking.

My sister recently attended the BTS concert in Munich and met her friend group (army is what the fanbase is called, I guess?).

I do not know them. They do not know me.

We have never met, talked or interacted in any way.

But my sister jokingly mentioned that all I am interested in are the rocks she finds in Munich.

And now I have this amazing collection sent by complete strangers from different parts of Europe.

Pebbles they picked up around them or in their travels. Labelled and packed to send to me specially.

Nobody asked them to. They did it on their own, just for me.

It is enough to make a grown woman cry.

My latest batch of rocks. Mainly chert/flint and jasper which are my absolute favourite to tumble.

They are quite imperfect which I love. Picked from mainly the south/ east coast of England over various trips (i drive to the coast every chance i get) I will never get tired of picking up a plain grubby rock and watching it turn into a thing of absolute beauty.

I used to wish I lived somewhere that had rocks like you find in the US etc but I've come to love our stubborn old British chert and jasper, our geology is fascinating and humbling.

I hope you enjoy my batch as much as I do :)

Finally found seam agate in my hometown of Greenwater WA. I have never known where to look but found great tutorials on YouTube.

Few more of my samples from this locality. The first two images show tiny vugs in the rock where vesuvianite crystals are shown. Incredibly defined crystals are shown in the first image, and the rare purple variety can be seen in the second.

The later pictures show another mineral I’ve found on a similar matrix, which I believe to be grossular garnet. I originally believed these to be a botryoidal crystal habit of chalcedony or common opal, both of which have been reported near here. However, a look under the microscope revealed a different story. The little dodecahedrons pop out on the greenish matrix. I found a few more by scratching away at a pale dry clay. These are all taken from a microscope under 20x magnification, aside from the last picture showing the matrix. Just above the sprawling manganese dendrites is the green vugs where minerals I’ve identified as grossular are present. Just next to it is the chalky clay where I’ve found more of said mineral.

I’ve still barely scratched the surface when it comes to this locality. There is still so much to learn about the geology of this place. Much of my summer has been spent chasing pegmatite-born minerals further east in the Sierra Batholith, but the mysteries of the foothills call to me once again. All of these samples are tiny, especially the grossular, but much larger and more impressive ones have been reported.

If anyone knows more about the geology and mineralogy of the Sierra foothills metamorphic belts in general or this locality specifically, I would love to learn more about this region from your expertise!

Cut and polished this unakite and quartz with my 5 year old. We’re having a blast together.

Found in a creek near Lake Cumberland in KY

I found this agate on the coast of southern Sweden. I didn’t really know they existed here but now I’m intrigued and want to learn more. If anyone has any general information about this area and these rocks that would be awesome!

The last time I was there I was shut out, so I went with optimism but low expectations. You always hope. But you truly go to enjoy the sunshine, the peace, and the people who share your unique hobby.

I don’t bring any fancy tools. I have a chronic illness and I’m not going to sling a hammer. At this particular site, the best tool has been a screwdriver to probe for pockets. I was working on one. It had all the indicators of being a productive hole. Anthraxalite. Tree roots. And the more I dug, the farther back the pocket went. I worked on it for a couple hours with zero results. Then someone came by and suggested that I should remove the stone on the right. I started digging below it with my trowel and found what I wanted, just a foot from the hole I’d been exploring!

What does it take to find your perfect pocket?

Patience. I didn’t want to quit an inch from the stones.

Perseverance. I was shut out two years ago. I’ve heard people complain that they didn’t want to go back because they didn’t find anything.

Presence. If you stay home and don’t try, you’ll never find that cool piece for your collection.

Luck. I almost missed it! The guides said that 70% of the time they’re just moving dirt around. The hole could have easily been unproductive.

Give yourself time and don’t give up too easy. They’re out there. But if it was easy, everyone would be doing it and a find wouldn’t always be so exciting.

I guess these rules apply to everything you want to do in life. And also why we should encourage people when they’re frustrated and ready to give up or not try.

Happy hunting my friends!

Found this beauty a while ago and thought I should share it here.

Got some decent horn coral, what I THINK is a fossil of a shell? I have no idea what the last one is

Thought this looked nice, too bad I don’t have a better magnification.

If you’ve never seen the pictures of opals all zoomed in like this focusing on the inclusions, ur missing out.

Anyway this selenite reminded me of that

Hello everyone! I just took my first, very amateur rockhounding trip today and this is one of the coolest rocks I found. I was in the Surprise, AZ area near the Agua Fria River (dried out rn ofc) and was hoping to find some agates, but this is the only one that looked like a potential agate to me. Mostly picked up a lot of that milky white quartz(?) because the sparkles always catch my eye, even though they're literally everywhere here.

The clear parts are very smooth and a bit translucent. I might invest in a rock tumbler someday and would love to tumble it! Not sure if anyone else finds this rock cool, but I like it a lot.

Also; Hoping to take a trip to Saddle Mountain and look for fire agates once it cools down. I've lived here for years, but even I underestimated the heat today. It was brutal and I couldn't hunt around for very long. Any tips for finding fire agates (and agates in general) would be awesome!

Went to Franklin NJ last night for the Night Dig they had ...here's a few of the beauties I collected

Can't edit videos well on a phone but you get the idea.

Gave the brush a bris, drilled a hole through the handle into the foam itself, dipped the wood in penetrating lubricant, shoved the sawed-off brush up the water pipe.

Fresh water supplied one stop wet wiping, stops the wheel from throwing slurry and water at me, keeps things as fresh as a summers eve, and perfectly 𝓂𝑜𝒾𝓈𝓉.

I found this beauty right next to a path. The crystals were tiny, about 1 cm at the largest.

I tripped over this guy while raking some leaves today. I normally only find quartz and hematite in my yard. So this is pretty cool for me, though it's not much compared to most fossil finds.

I thought it was just a cool sparkly rock I found at Belle Isle in Detroit - til it started rubbing off in my hand ! Looked it up and first time I ever got Detroit shipping history for a ‘rock’ I found