FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Joan Massagué]

I have in my collection a proustite from Scheeberg that was formerly in the Godshaw collection and passed through various hands before it reached my collection. I would be interested in knowing more about Godshaw and her collection, but I cannot find anything on the subject anywhere. Do you know who she was and what her collection was like?

[John S. White]

My very good friend Rock Currier has kindly provided the following text about Marion Godshaw. It may not be exhaustive but it is all that I have at the moment. Will try to find more:

Godshaw, Marion
Marion was predominately a mineral collector and not a dealer. She and her
husband ran a shoe store or perhaps two shoe stores and imported some shoes
as well. She had a collection of several thousand specimens that Cal Graeber
sold when she died. He sold many of them rather reasonably I thought which
was what she wanted I think and I bought a number of specimens from her
collection. She was responsible for starting what was called the Red Carpet
mineral show in the Santa Monica Civic auditorium which ran for many years.
She knew Martin Ehrman well enough to buy specimens from him directly. In
later years she started her own mineral business called Specific Minerals
which was really more to provide funds to add to her own mineral collection.
Sort of like a dope dealer selling drugs to pay for their habit. I think a
lot of us do that. She was good friends with another well known lady
collector here in the Los Angeles area who is still with us, Kay Robertson.
For years she was a mainstay in the Westside Mineralogists. I remember a
funny incident that took place 40 years ago between Marion and me. Sol
Shalevits, father of Lee Shale decided to sell his mineral collection and he
did it at Lee Shales jewelry store/mineral shop over on Pico Blvd over in
Los Angeles. Both Marion and I were there trying hard to grab good things
before the other could get them. Lee would bring out a tray of his fathers
specimens lay it down between us on the counter. Marion who had a lot more
experience at such things than I, on one side of the counter and I on the
other. The first tray that that was put down for us to look at, Marion
picked up a non descript specimen and handed it to me and said. "Look at
this carefully and tell me what you think". While I was looking at it, she
was busy high grading the tray. I thought it was a rather shoddy trick, but
have now come to chuckle about it every time I think about it.

[John S. White]

I promised that I would try to learn more about Marion Godshaw and I have just received this bit of information from Wendell Wilson, the editor of Mineralogical Record:

Marion Seigel Godshaw, born in Illinois on December 10, 1915; died in Santa Monica, California, on March 4 (or 31), 1989. She was the volunteer Advertising Manager for the American Mineralogist for many years. She built a formidable personal collection which was sold for the family by Cal Graeber following her death. The MGM (Marion Godshaw Memorial) quarry is named after her (I don't know anything about it though). She was a charter subscriber to the Record in 1970, bless her.

[John S. White]

Wendell Wilson has just entered a reference to Marion Godshaw along with photograph in the Mineralogical Record Label Archives which can be accessed with this link:

https://mineralogicalrecord.com/labels.asp?colid=788&submitmineral.x=49&submitmineral.y=6

[Joan Massagué]

John, Rock, Wendel

Thank you for tracking and posting this information, both here and in the Min Rec site. This is great!

Jordi: thanks to you too for the wonderful initiative of setting up the Forum

Regards to all,

Joan