FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[rocknut]

Hi Jordi,

You mentioned some world class, blood red, vanadanites on Baryte found in January -> https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?p=7318#7318
Do these resemble the ones that were so abundant a few years back? They were everywhere and then seemed to disappear.

Jeff

[Jordi Fabre]

The history of the Moroccan Vanadinite is fascinating, hopefully some day it would be written. I can just write a brief resume now:

Vanadinites were mined in Mibladen in the past by a French company, and during many years Vanadinite was frequent in the market although its quality was not so high. As the exploitation of the Vanadinites was related by fellows attached to the former king of Morocco Hassan II, the really poor people of Mibladen don't had chances to collect themselves fine Vanadinites due the strong security conditions. When Hassan II died and his son Mohamed VI replace him, the security conditions relaxed and during 2-3 years the best shafts, holes or just surfaces were intensely dug by thousand of starving searchers. During this bonanza, Vanadinites came to the market in big quantities and with superb quality. After this period the decline arrived and currently, just some good pocket appear rarely and most of them haven't the high quality of the specimens mined at the start of this century.

An excellent reportage of the "golden times" was published in this web page: https://www.bocamina.com/ESP/noticias8.htm
Is in Spanish language, but the texts are very short and a lot of images shows well this "vanadium rush".