It’s not a collection until it’s organized!

April 15, 2008
by Ray Hill

I have had the privilege of going out rock hunting with many folks in recent years. Some of the people that went with me are knowledgeable and have been at it for a long time and a few are just beginners. I personally have been going on collecting trips for about twenty years now. I can think of no other hobby I’d rather be involved in. Rock collecting has brought me many hours of enjoyment and has put me in contact with some really great people over the years.

I think one thing about this hobby that all of us enjoy is being able to share, or show off our collections to others. I know I do. It brings me great pleasure when someone comes into my office and comments on all the pretty rocks on display. After all, being able to brag a little about what you have done is icing on the cake, so to speak. It certainly makes the effort worthwhile.

And, one thing that amazes me is the fact that there are many “collectors” that like going on the field trips and getting buckets of rocks, then bring them home and do nothing with them. The material ends up sitting in boxes or buckets in the basement or garage for ever and ever. They have not taken the time to get the material they have found organized in any manner. I’ve been to another rock collector’s house and when I asked to see their collection they would take me out to the back yard and show me the rocks laying around the flower beds or maybe show me buckets of material, with spider webs and dust covering the tops, out in the garage. I think to myself, “This isn’t much of a collection!” It is just a bunch of rocks. There’s no organization to it.

Now, I know that rockhounds are a varied bunch. They have different backgrounds, educations, experiences, incomes, etc. I understand. One person may be into tumbling or cutting stones for jewelry while another is thrilled about a different facet of the hobby (Pun intended!) like fossils, meteorites, doing inlay work or whatever.

But one thing I don’t understand is the collector not having some kind of organization for the material they collect. It may be that some folks are not interested in showing off their finds, or don’t know how to organize the material they’ve collected. It’s my humble opinion that you don’t have a collection in the true sense of the word unless you have your material organized where you know what you have and where it came from. And, by the way, not having your rocks organized, identified with name and location, greatly reduces its value.

In the past 20 years I have had a number of people contact me and say they have a rock collection that was collected by their father, aunt, uncle, or whatever, and wanted to know if I would look at it and give them an idea as to the worth of the material and to see if maybe I would like to purchase the material. When they brought the material over, I didn’t think much of it because of the condition it was in. There would be no labels on any of the material and they would not know where the material came from. “It’s just some rocks Dad collected” they would say.

You can take common road gravel, put it in a small box with an attractive description label giving the name of the rock, where it came from, maybe the type rock (Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic), the hardness of the rock, and maybe the date it was found, and low-and-behold, it now has a value. It’s no longer just common road gravel! It is now a cataloged specimen in a collection. The rock now has “character”! It is now an identified, marked, labeled specimen, with value.

Recently, one of my Rock Buddies and I went over to a site within a couple of miles of my home where workers were doing some heavy grading of a large lot that was going to be a Super WalMart. It was late in the evening and none of the workers were around so we looked through the material they were bringing out of the ground with their heavy equipment. We found large quantities of a metamorphic rock, biotite mica schist. See Biotite Mica Schist. We both loaded up as much of this material as we could tote away that evening. The next day, I got outside on my rock bench with this material and a hammer and chisel. I put together three flats of this material in three different sizes. I put the specimens into the fold-up boxes and typed nice description labels for them. My daughter photographed the material and we put it up on our site. This was last summer. To date, we have sold about three hundred dollars worth of this mica. We were able to do this because we made nice size mineral specimens out of the large chunks, put the pieces into small display boxes, put description cards with each specimen and turned the material into good collectable specimens. Just a pile of rocks by themselves do not make collectable specimens.

See article: SO YOUR CHILD LIKES ROCKS

I recently wrote an article entitled “So Your Child Likes Rocks”. See link above. In this article I explained the importance of organizing your rocks. It’s not a collection until it is organized!!!

Let me tell you what I do with my rocks, especially those I personally collect. Like many others, I will gather up as much material as I find when I’m on a field trip. Some of the material contains good looking pieces and other pieces are not so good. I think we all do this. When I get back home I take all of the material that I have collected and clean it, usually outside on my rock bench using the water hose. Then I will lay them out on a board to dry. Once the rocks have been cleaned and dried, I look through them to see what I have. At this point I pick out the really good looking specimens that I want to put on display inside in my rock cabinets. I put each one in a white fold-up box, and then place them in one of my collection cabinets. I place the balance of the material on my “Rock Wall”. See my article about Get rid of those buckets.

I place the cleaned pieces on my rock wall in groups so I will know what an item is and where it is from. Nearly every rockhound that comes here spends time out there walking up and down my rock wall admiring the specimens.

See my Collection Cabinet. Every specimen I have in my personal collection has been identified with description labels that give the name, location, date acquired, mineral group, and how I obtained it. If I purchased the specimen, I put the price that I paid for it on the label. Should something happen to me, those that look at my rock collection will have this information without having to “dig” for it. This adds value to any type collection… rocks, pipes, razors, sea shells, fishing lures, etc. It’s not a collection until it is organized. What if someone showed you a cigar-box full of mixed type lures….without any information as to what they were, how old they were, where they were from? You wouldn’t think much of that box of stuff would you? Well, that’s because there is no organization to it.

GET YOUR ROCKS ORGANIZED INTO A COLLECTION: As an absolute minimum you should write down the name of your rock specimens and where they came from.

I use slide-out drawer collection cabinets for my smaller specimens. I put the stones in one of those white fold-up boxes, the right size for that specimen and then place a typed label in the box. I glue the label to the back inside wall of the box, that way it can never get misplaced. When I am showing the specimens, or am studying specimens in my collection I always pick up the fold-up box with the specimen in it so as not to handle the specimen itself. In recent years since my collection has grown I have drawers for a group of specimens. I have two drawers that hold my collection of calcite specimens. It’s amazing how many different colors and crystal shapes that calcite takes. I have calcite specimens from all over the world; many different colors and crystal formations. I have two drawers dedicated to my quartz crystal collection, representing many different types and locations: smoky quartz, tabby quartz crystals, rutilated quartz crystals, quartz crystals with water bubbles, skeletal crystals, phantom crystals, etc.

I know what every specimen is, where it came from, when I got it, how much I paid for it if I purchased it, who gave it to me if it was a gift. You can also catalog your collection by assigning a number to each specimen and maintaining a journal with the information for each specimen. This is a lot of work and takes dedication. I don’t have the dedication to go that far. But I am convinced that if you are going to be a rock collector, you need to develop a workable system for keeping your specimens identified and basic information about each specimen. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate system, just something to keep track of what you have. That’s important. If you haven’t started keeping some type information on your rocks specimens, I suggest you start now.

To start, get a bunch of the white fold-up boxes to put your specimens in. They come in many different sizes. Place each piece in a separate box to protect it from banging against other specimens. Either write out or type a label that will fit into the box. Glue the label to the inside. You can now place your identified specimens in a display case, a cabinet drawer, or even a shoe box. You can also place your specimens in the fold-up boxes in cardboard drink flats that you can get at any convenience store. They are free. Then you can stack them, one atop another in a safe place.

So, stop making excuses. Get your pretty rocks organized. Make labels for them. Store them in a suitable place. After awhile, you will be able to look at your many treasures, properly identified with basic information and admire with pride, the collection and the work you’ve done to create it.

Ray Hill
Great South Gems & Minerals, Inc.
www.greatsouth.net
888-933-GEMS

Note: Only rock clubs have permission to print this article but must give credit to the author, Ray Hill, and Great South Gems & Minerals, Inc. For everyone else, please email us for permission.

Great South Gems & Minerals, Inc. www.greatsouth.net 38 Bond Drive Ellenwood, Georgia 30294 USA 1-888-933-GEMS (4367) FAX 770-474-4507