Rolf and Mary’s store is half-way between Tucson and Tombstone. You won’t find a more authoritative mineral dealer anywhere than Rolf Luetcke. Check Mindat. You’ll see. And ask him about catching rattlesnakes. Full article here:
Made this sign today to hang on our gate so people can call to come visit the shop.
I’m asking for people to put on masks since Mary and I are both high-risk.
We shall see how things go and tomorrow when I hang this sign on the front and closed gate. If anyone drives to the gate with a mobile phone, I can go and open in only about half a minute. Not a problem.
We will see how this works.
Just thought I let you know we are trying to get back to some semblance of normal. Rolf Luetcke
I self-collected my first piece of sandstone yesterday in a desert wash near Las Vegas. It has two bullseyes which I think is extremely unusual. Most sandstone exhibits bedding or strata.
Here’s a single still picture below, then two videos. The rock is this picture is wet from my cleaning it; it looks better when dry.
My friend the geologist R.C. says. “The curved lines are liesegang banding, an iron oxide stain. It forms the picture rock like that sold in Kanab, just from a different rock formation.”
I have a piece of picture rock that has been heat treated to bring out the iron color. I bought that small slab two years ago. I show it in the second video.
Here’s a short vid with good color of my rock. I made it on the tailgate of my truck when I first found it.
This is a longer video with sound and indoor light. It’s a more informative video but the color of the rock is not so good. I am still learning about video.
Update: Just noticed that a piece of sandstone I bought at Vanderford’s Gold Strike in Goldfield, Nevada also exhibits orbs. Perhaps they are more common than I thought. Much to learn and notice. Let me know in the comments below if you have any bullseye sandstone.
Rolph’s Luetcke’s sends some pictures of his sandstone collection and shares some of his recollections on same.
Hi Tom,
Cool piece you found. I have some from Nevada and got those in a neat way. One trip up to Oregon to collect Obsidian and Opal back in the 70’s. One motel had a bunch of the picture rock lying in the weeds by the side of its property. The gal who owned the place happened to come out when I was looking at the stones and I asked her about them and she said she was sorry about that mess and she had meant to get someone to clean it up. I smiled and said I would be glad to remove them for her. She was so very happy to get rid of that junk. To some it is junk, to me it was treasure and free for the picking. I still have some of the pieces lying out in the back yard. Made some cabachons out of the material too and it worked up fairly nicely as you can see.
The next is from Arizona and a fellow who used to run the Pima College mineral class used to stop by our store, that is another story, but they had gone collecting and got a bunch of this stuff and gave us a nice piece.
The next piece is a stone from the mountains just to our West. We used to have access to one canyon that is actually visible from our place but someone locked the gate now. I went up there often when we first started here to get flat rock for a big area I used the stones as “paving” stones. Many had these banded patterns and those were the favorites to pick up.
The last one is from Sedona, the sandstone there had wonderful banding and I have better ones too but this photo was fairly easy to find. The patterns in the sandstone were iron also.
The Gila Monster
Today I saw our area Gila Monster on my late afternoon dog walk. I went back to get my camera and got some nice photos. Thought you would enjoy seeing it, my favorite lizard. This one seems to show itself every 4 years. We first saw it in 2011 then again in 2015 and now this year. You are welcome to post those photos or for that matter, any we send you.
I had said I would send a photo of one I was taking and a little story.
The Ludlockite is a piece I had only read about in a big “Worlds Best Minerals Book we have. It was a piece that a mineral dealer had seen on a porch of a guy in Namibia that sold specimens from the Tsumeb Mine, one of the most famous mines in the world.
The piece on the porch was being used to hold open the screen door. The dealer asked if it was for sale. The guy sold it to him and he sent it right off to his US business and it turned out to be a new mineral and that one chunk on the guy’s porch was all there was.
I had no idea when I saw one for sale for $10, the piece I took the photo of, that it had been discovered in the mine after that first piece was studied. They traced the associated minerals with it and found the place in the mine it had come from.
More was brought out but it was never very common. I got this one for so little and am very happy with it, as much for the story as the piece and as pretty as it is.
The other two I took photos of today too. The Ludjibaite is a rare species and I paid a bit more for the piece, $45 but it is very nice.
The last one of Ludlamite from Mexico we got many years ago and I paid only $10 for it as well and it is a well crystalized piece.
Ludjibaite with Pseudomalachite 4mm fov Shituro, Katanga Prov. D. R. Congo (Blue)
Ludlamite 7mm fov Santa Eulalia, Chihuahua, Mexico (Green)
Ludlockite, Germanite, plus 5mm fov Tsumeb Mine, Namibia (Red)
More on the famous Tsumeb mine comes from this text at Mr. Kerry Day’s excellent website, he being the owner and proprietor of KAYGEEDEE MINERALS, a Canadian vendorship devoted to the mineral collecting hobby. He was an economic geologist/mineralogist/SEM-EDS operator for many years. “Selling off my vast collection of mineral specimens, gemstones and lapidary rough has become my retirement hobby.”
It’s a truly fascinating site that I recommend you visit immediately, for a sensational trip around the world while staying right at home. Thousands of great pictures.
The Tsumcorp polymetallic ore deposit was a near vertical ore pipe located near the town of Tsumeb, Namibia. A unique feature was three oxidation zones at various depths - the result of groundwater flow. The combination of oxidation(s) and unique chemistry created a vast suite of well crystallized minerals that are treasured by collectors worldwide. Unfortunately, mining ceased in the 1990s but neighboring ore pipes are now being explored/mined.”
There are things out there that certainly are mysteries. I have quite a few in my past that were interesting.
One was a fellow on Mindat.org who found me by way of that site. He was from Tucson and messaged me about something he found deep in the mountains of SE Arizona. He was not a mineral guy but found a vein of quartz that had a silver material all over it and he was convinced it was a new metallic deposit he had discovered while bird watching. He sent me a piece and as soon as I saw it I knew it was not a natural material. I emailed him back and said I thought it was something man made. He just couldn’t believe it since it was “in the middle of nowhere” as he said. I told him to take it to the University of Arizona Mineral Museum. I told him I thought it was some kind of stuff painted on the rocks since it was only on the outside and didn’t go into the quartz where he broke it.
He took it to the University and they were also intrigued and said they would test it. He wrote me back a week later and said he got the results and it was aluminum paint. He was certain he had found a new mineral deposit but someone had actually painted some rocks in the middle of nowhere.
Another one was a fellow we met at the shop had been in the same area of old mines and he was a mineral collector, although not a very knowledgeable one. He posted on Mindat that he thought he found Millerite in the Patagonia area. He had not contacted me until after he had posted the material. I told him that was not possible because there was no chemistry in S Arizona to support that. Another friend had been with him and he gave me a piece of the same ore and as soon as I looked under the microscope I saw it was Stibnite, a mineral that was supported by the chemistry. They did find that Stibnite in an area Mindat did not list for that mineral’s locality, so that information has been added to Mindat. It was not the Millerite he hoped it was.
Dreams die hard. Mary told me many years ago when I found a new thing at a local mine and thought it might be some rare species, she said it is probably a much more common species but in a form I had not seen. She is usually right in pretty much all these cases and I learned a valuable lesson. I passed that onto the friend who gave me the Stibnite and he now thinks that his material was probably a more common mineral.
Got a bunch of those stories over nearly 48 years of mineral collecting. Having worked with minerals now for so long I have gotten pretty good at identification but I do need to use a microscope to be sure.
Will be interesting to figure out what that “weird stuff” turns out to be you found in that field. Seems rock related and not necessarily mineral related and that is often harder to get figured out than a mineral.
