FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Les Presmyk]

Jesse, you are correct. When the material started coming out of the Kombat mine, the term primary was used to impress upon people these were malachite crystals, not pseudomorphs, in much the same way with the Zaire crystals that came out 15 years later. It is not that big a deal, really, because it is used within the hobby and will probably not be going away for quite some time. I have lived through labelling rules that originally felt that tourmaline and garnet were the species names and everything was a variety. Now, they are all individual species, which really makes more sense, except for those who still refer to all tourmalines as tourmaline, not the specific species.

[John S. White]

I would just remind Jesse that words have different meanings to different people. If a dealer or collector describes his or her malachite specimen as primary malachite, I know exactly what he or she intends. Most mineral collectors are not trained in ore petrogenesis and the terminology unique to that field is alien to most collectors.

[Ed Huskinson]

Yeah, good point John. I hadn't considered that. It goes to what Jesse and Les said about it (ie, the use of the word "primary") to be a marketing issue, unique to the description of the specimen at hand. Your description of primary malachite fits my specimen from Zaire perfectly: glassy, lustrous, perfect cleavage, etc. Hence the labelling. Now I get that.

So our discussion here diverted a bit from the purely mineralogical side of things and began to head down the economic geology/ore petrogenesis side of things. Sort of. But we mineral collecting explorationists do not have a forum for ourselves, so we're using this one. And it seems to be germane to the issue. If we wander outside the realm of minerals and mineral collecting a bit, well, I / we apologize.

So John, I think you've put the final nail into this thing, at least as far as primary malachite is concerned with regard to the collecting/dealing community. You've summed it up perfectly.

I'm still curious about this though: "When DOES the hydrothermal process end and the supergene process begin"? If there is an answer to this question at all. Maybe Peter will be able to shed some light here, or at least weigh in with an opinion.

For dealers and some collectors and mineralogists, bottom line, it comes to this: "Certain processes produced these minerals, and here they are for sale or trade". Then comes "Okay, so, what's the discount?" (Hey you have to ask, or they won't respect you...)

I've enjoyed this topic. I learned a lot, and it made me think. For this I thank everyone, especially Jordi, who started it all. I'm not saying it's over, just that the question has been answered to my satisfaction. Now I'm going to go look up struvite and enterolith...

Thanks again,

Ed