FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[ancientmttreasures]

Hello, friends!
We are new to the area of Oaxaca, and we are doing tons of research on where to go to mine for ourselves.
If anyone has any information they can provide, I would be ever grateful!

Thanks!
-Sky

[John Betts]

Out of the 70,000+ minerals sold, I have never had a single mineral specimen from Oaxaca. That indicates that Oaxaca is not very well mineralized.

[ancientmttreasures]

There's quite a few minerals native to Oaxaca, actually! Beautiful stuff! Just been difficult finding any solid info on where you can and cannot mine publicly.

[John S. White]

Many, many years ago I collected very large scapolite crystals in a marble at Ayoquesco, Oaxaca. I believe there are also augelite and zircon crystals. We used a hand drill and dynamite as the marble is quite hard. It was a large outcrop so there should be lots more to recover.

[Jordi Fabre]

You can check: The silver minerals from San Jose district, Oaxaca (Mexico)

[Peter Megaw]

Although Oaxaca is not as prolific a specimen producer as say Chihuahua or Durango, in large part because of a dominantly agricultural society, mining has been important there historically and again more recently with active mines at Taviche especially. John is right about the scapolite locality, a number of species (zircon, scapolite,diopside) there are huge and well developed. The locals are not always friendly though, so be modest in your collecting. The San Jose de Taviche Mine has been producing some very nice silver sulfides and sulfosalts for the last few years...most recently very respectable pyrargyrites, previously nice tetrahedrites with micro-proustites. The La Panchita Mine has produced nice adamites and related zinc arsenates too.

Get a hold of a copy of the government published Monografia Geologico Minero del Estado de Oaxaca...it describes the many mining districts...active and dormant throughout the state, and you can set out collecting based on those descriptions. There has to be a great opportunity in developing the collecting culture around Taviche...if more folks bought specimens from the miners more stuff would come out.

There are also some wonderful exposures of skarns along the coastal beaches with great ventifacts where blowing sand has carved out calcite from between garnet crystals.

[Jean Sendero]

Agree with Peter, not a prolific state. But the years that I worked in the state, I came across several occurrences of interesting, well crystallized, species. As mentioned by Jordi and Peter, over the past 3 years, we have seen emerging from Mina San Jose in Taviche some very interesting sulfosalts but as well sulfides such as sphalerite and stibnite.

During the days I worked in Oaxaca, I collected some very nice botryoidal grey smithsonite with pearly luster partially coated with hydrozincite from Yucocundo, groups of azurite micro crystals forming "balls" to 0.7 cm from La Esperanza. I extracted in excess of 300 cupro adamite specimen from Mina El Pancho and El Buho. Some very nice andradite garnets were recovered from the state.

So saying not well mineralized is probably a "big statement". I would rather say, Oaxaca offers excellent potential for future mineral production due to it's untapped potential and lack of collecting culture.

[Inma]

[texasdigger]

Here is a nice garnet, as mentioned above, from Oaxaca, Mexico.

[John S. White]

Only photo I can find from when I collected giant scapolites at Ayoquezco in 1964. Here the trip guide and a local are hand drilling holes for dynamite in the skarn that carries the very large scapolites.

[Peter Lemkin]

mindat has three photos of Ayoquesco, Oaxaca Scapolites.

[jeorge]

Hi Peter

La Panchita Mine, Ayoquezco Town produces scapolites, diopside, serandite, zircon, orange calcite and others pegmatitic sizes especimens

El Pancho Mine, Teitipac Town produces Adamites...

Saludos

[James Catmur]

When I was a child (so back in the early 1970s) I found this at the Monte Alban archaeological site. It has been in my collection ever since, but I have never got around to doing an ID on it. It may be from Oaxaca, or from further afield. Who knows. But this thread reminded me of it and the need to, one day, get an ID for the mineral. Fibrous structure showing no real termination.

[AndreyWhiteB]

[Matt_Zukowski]

Gneiss is too high a metamorphic grade to host garnets.

This link is to the mindat page for Oaxaca https://www.mindat.org/loc-14688.html. This page lists one locality for garnets Zacatepec, Oaxaca, Mexico https://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?loc=14688&min=8597.

I would like to caution you about obtaining permission from the landowner before doing any prospecting.

[AndreyWhiteB]