FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Screenname]

I see tons of posts on here asking for locality of a specimen they own but how can you tell where it comes from by looking at? And how can I learn to do this? I would like to able to learn a skill like that but I suppose it also has a lot to do with knowing about local mines in certain areas and knowing what grows in, perhaps I just answered my question there but it can't be as simple as that. I have lots of specimens and I know where in the world some of them could be from but have no idea where they really are from. And also I look at photos on here and to me they all the same no matter where they are from.

[Matt_Zukowski]

I am no expert, but the only way i know of is looking at lots and lots of specimens. For instance, if you look at a lot of the tourmaline on the market these days, it becomes easy to identify a typical Paprok, Pederneira, Santa Rosa, etc. The key word is typical. What gets really interesting is when you find a piece that does not fit into the "typical" mold from that locality. When this happens, I look and ask around and see if i can confirm that it indeed comes from that locality. If i can confirm that it is weird from that locality, my knowledge of what is "typical" from a locality increases. Lots of fun.

One way to do this that costs you nothing is watch the auctions sites. Find pieces you like, guess a price, and watch it go off auction. The guess allows you to have some investment in the outcome of the auction, which helps burn the synapses, even though it costs you nothing. Looking through locality pages at mindat would also be helpful. Finally, all the mineral literature people have talked about here can help you develop a sense for what stuff from somewhere looks like.

[Jordi Fabre]

Museums and Mineralogical magazines, both are also very, very important, but for sure the "most" are the mineral Shows, a huge amount of information is concentrated there...