Having caught the gemstone-hunting bug early in my life chasing sapphires at the Anakie gem fields (Central Queensland, Australia in the early 1970s), I have always loved the thrill of the hunt for shiny things. They don’t have to be valuable shiny things, just a tiny piece of God’s creation that nobody had ever seen before I laid my hand on it.

Learning Specking

As kids, we weren’t much into the hard yakka (labor) of digging and sieving, but soon learned the fine art of ‘specking’, which is walking around with eyes glued to the ground in front of us, picking up the bits left behind by more ambitious, or perhaps more discerning, fossickers (searcher for rocks and minerals).

A few of these finds were jewelry-quality though most were not, but that didn’t devalue them in our eyes or make the process of looking for them any less enjoyable. Dirt, sunshine, and freedom to explore the pristine bushland that we camped in with no amenities whatsoever, but when you are a ten-year-old, who needs showers?

Family Move Leads to More Gem Locations

The family moved to Cairns when I started secondary school, and it took us a few years to discover that there were gemstones to be found in North Queensland also, and where they could be lawfully found.

We started making family trips to the Mt. Gibson topaz fields in the early 1980s, by which time I had found a good man to marry, and he caught the gem-hunting bug on his very first trip despite none of us having much idea of what we were looking for.

We had a couple of elderly long-wheelbase Land Rovers that carried us and all the camping gear. The vehicles steadfastly chugged their way up the mountain, albeit with no air-conditioning and springs (shocks) that were built for durability, not for comfort. That was all we needed for a promising long weekend!

Fast forward some 30 years, and in the company of our adult children and their significant others, we were still eager to find more lovely topaz and headed to another fossicking area called O’Brien’s Creek, 37km (22 miles) north of Mt. Surprise and just over 400km (248 miles) from Cairns.

The Atherton Tablelands

After leaving tropical Cairns on the coast, two routes lead to the Atherton Tablelands. This area is known for beef/dairy farms and fields of sugarcane, maize, potatoes, peanuts, fruit, and vegetables of all kinds.

Travelers are advised to follow the signs that point toward Herberton/Ravenshoe and enjoy the sight of the majestic wind turbine farm and the dairying district of Ravenshoe. A must-remember destination on the path to the dig site on the return trip is the hot thermal springs at Innot Hot Springs – heavenly for a good long soak after a day’s digging.

The route takes travelers through the tin mining area of Mt. Garnet. This distance of 192km (119 miles) takes about 2.5 hours to travel from Cairns. The next leg of the journey involves another 62km (38 miles) southwards through the quaint town of Mt. Garnet, along the Kennedy Development Road through the 40-Mile Scrub with its unusual Queensland Bottle Trees. Then it’s westward to Mt. Surprise township. This road is all-weather bitumen (asphalt) and the journey takes travelers another 73km (45 miles). The final turn off the main highway brings rockhounds toward the O’Brien’s Creek fossicking area, which is well-identified at the western end of the town, just opposite the local police station.

Accommodations

The town of Mt. Surprise has several motels and good caravan parks. However, the O’Brien’s Creek camping area (which is situated squarely on the banks of Elisabeth Creek) with its hot showers and toilets, and large campsites on the banks of the beautiful creek abounding with birdlife, is undoubtedly a choice location. Camping is not permitted within the boundaries of the designated fossicking area.

The camp area is amazingly pleasant, with Elizabeth Creek flowing most of the year, an unusual occurrence in the harsh environment of this country. During school holidays, families set up camp, relax and paddle canoes along the creek.

Twitchers (birdwatchers) and wildlife enthusiasts make the journey to camp here specifically to watch the apostle birds, bower birds, and blue-aced honey-eaters. They make themselves at home around your campsite, with kookaburras and butcherbirds waiting for, or stealing, a snack from unguarded plates. Mother galahs feed their babies while crimson-wing and rosella parrots feed on grass seeds almost at your feet. Big flocks of black cockatoos land for a late afternoon drink on the sandy river banks.

Digging for Topaz

Gem-quality stones were plentiful and were measured by the dinner plate full in the early days of the fossicking field, but constant picking over has reduced the finds considerably. This area was extensively mined for tin in the late 1800s, using only hand tools, with little mechanical assistance and often little or no water.

These dedicated miners found tin, but they saw no value in the shiny chunks of topaz they turned over in the process, so they left them behind in the tailings and mullock heaps. These are what fossickers chase today. There are still active mining leases in the area, of which few are worked consistently, but they remain out of bounds to fossickers.

If you are traveling in a conventional vehicle, fields of the Designated Fossicking Area (DFA) signposted ‘Tourmaline Gully’ and ‘Crystal Gully’ are generally easily accessed and the first places to visit. The access road runs along the western side of O’Brien’s Creek, and numerous tracks are leading into the sandy creek beds where fossickers have been at work.

Dry sieving in the creek can produce lovely topaz, quartz crystals, tin crystals (cassiterite), and the rarer aquamarine, especially after the wet-season rain scours the creek banks. Rockhounds do have to expend considerable effort removing large rocks, tree roots, and other obstacles to process new ground.

Geology Contributes to Rock Shape

These finds are generally more waterworn and rounded than stones found in the higher areas, which are sharper-edged and more crystalline in appearance. Evidence of digging in the river bank is visible everywhere, so visitors are advised to choose an appealing place and heft the shovel. As the DFA is part of a working cattle station, fossickers need to be aware of wandering stock, and the fertilizer they leave in their wake.

Since 1968, the Australian Government has set aside ‘Designated Fossicking Areas’ throughout Australia that permit people to fossick for gemstones and gold. Most of these areas are on private land, and landholders allow people to hunt gems in these areas providing they do not interfere with farming activities. A fossickers license is required in Queensland whether the fossicker is using private land or digging in a designated fossicking area. These licenses can be bought online at the ‘Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy’ for around $75 AU (around $50 U.S.) for a year.

Visitors to the area will see the proof of many eager people having worked the top of the hill. This area produces lovely smoky quartz crystals, and the locals swear they have found
tourmaline here also.

If you have a 4WD and are not afraid to get it slightly battered, then the Blue Hills and McDonald Creek fields are the place to go. Being less accessible, not so much fossicking activity has taken place here as in other sites. The road was initially built for use by tin miners and kept in good condition. However, once
the tin mining declined, the constant use, no maintenance, and numerous wet seasons have made the road pretty rough – especially on the two jump-ups (short, steep rises).

These fields are where quality blue topaz can be found in the dry creek beds and by digging at the top of hills. Topaz crystals are also collected along the track toward the Six-Mile Creek area. Just walking over the ground that looks undisturbed is worthwhile for specking glints of topaz sitting on the soil surface, exposed by the elements.

The locals advise that moving a boulder and digging a little on the uphill side may bag you a gem, as topaz is weightier than the average creek gravel and tends to get lodged in back-wash crevices during flood events. A member of our family found a perfect aquamarine crystal here. It was sitting on the surface of the soil, catching her eye This crystal was since valued at between $1,200 and $1,800 as a rough specimen, all in a good day’s work!

The Difference Between Topaz & Diamonds

I mentioned to a Cairns geologist with whom I had previously worked that I was going fossicking at O’Brien’s Creek. He said, “Keep your eyes open for diamonds while you are there.” I asked, “How would you tell the difference between a diamond and a topaz?” His reply was, “You will certainly know the difference when you see it.”

That conversation reminded me of an incident that occurred when I worked as a GIS Officer (mapping) for an exploration company in Ravenshoe, North Queensland. A ‘tin scratcher’ came to the office to ask the geologists if a stone he had found might be a diamond?

Of course, everyone’s eyes lit up as we all gathered around the weather-beaten hand that held the find. Yes, though small, it was confirmed to be a diamond. The was suitably vague about where he had found it and replied, “out near Mt. Surprise.” That was in the late 1980s, and his words remained in the back of my mind since.

In 2016, while researching the history of tin miners who worked along Elizabeth and O’Brien’s Creeks, and Angor, a tin mining shantytown of the 1880s in the Mt. Surprise area, I came across a public company report that summarized all previous reports written for this region. It immediately caught my interest, and I admit to doing a little chicken dance around my office when the summary included reports of companies specifically looking for diamonds. The summary report was written in December 1993 by a consulting geologist for Northern Diamonds Pty Ltd. His report stated that up until 1993, 53 diamonds had been reportedly found in colors ranging from white to yellow. The sizes ranged from 0.3 carats to 5 carats, the latter being the largest noted.

During the 1980s, another geologist had contacted the people who had found the first 26 diamonds. He sent some of these to South Africa to be tested to determine their quality. The results were that they were certainly diamonds but not of top gem quality.

This was enough encouragement for exploration companies to continue to search the area of Elizabeth and O’Brien’s creeks until the late 1990s. Currently, diamond exploration is still relatively active in northern Queensland, especially in the Cape York goldfields region.

Discussing Origins of Diamonds

I questioned each geologist or miner I have spoken to about the area about where they thought the diamonds originate.

Confusingly, each geologist has a slightly different theory. The Cairns geologist said the Elizabeth Creek diamonds were formed as far away as the Palmer River in the Cape York area and migrated along the waterways. The consulting geologist who wrote the 1993 report speculated that they were local and traveled the Red River lineament. He stated that in his opinion, all the diamonds found up to that date ‘were associated with a 50km long relict Cretaceous placer, which parallels Elizabeth Creek’. He goes on to say, ‘The placer is characterized by well-rounded quartz pebbles known locally as ‘pigeon egg wash.’ We did find some of these ‘pigeon eggs’ on the top of a hill in the fossicking area, which may have journeyed along ancient paleochannels (riverbeds), and this speaks of significant geological upheaval activity.

The areas of Elizabeth and O’Brien’s Creeks are identified as being one of several relict Cretaceous mineralized river systems. The systems contain cassiterite, ilmenite, zircon, monazite, garnet, and gold. The Elizabeth Creek system is the only one to date known to potentially contain diamonds. Early mining reports reveal that before the1930’s, this area produced 376 tons of cassiterite from alluvium in creeks and gullies, and mining remained spasmodic until 1985 when the price of tin crashed.

The Elizabeth Creek system occurs as a semi-discontinuous group of sand ridges north of and parallels to the present Elizabeth Creek. The major alluvial workings in the area have been for cassiterite in the streams draining the sand ridges over its entire exposed length. The extensive basalt flows from the Undarra Cone to the east have touched this area on its southern boundary.

A word of warning here before venturing on a diamond-only search. Since 1976, only 53 diamonds have been reported as being found, though it is likely that some were not reported, or not immediately identified as being diamonds. The majority were sourced west of the fossicking area, but some came from O’Brien’s Creek within the DFA.

The diamonds in the fossicking area were found in the river bed of O’Brien’s Creek by tin miners and local people living in the area, who honestly believe there is the potential for more to be found. One local who has a Mineral Lease (ML) just outside the DFA, said that he found a diamond while working for a tin mining company in the 1980s.

Each trip to O’Brien’s Creek sees us bring home loads of unknown stones in the event they may be diamonds, as finding one, according to the locals, is entirely possible.

Most of our ‘treasures’ turn out to be chuckers (chuck them away) or leaverites (leave them right there), but it always surprises us when we wash these stones, and a considerable amount proves to be lovely topaz, sometimes blue. On the last trip, along with our aquamarine crystal, we found a small aquamarine chip by specking.

As our research suggests, diamonds have been found in ‘them thar hills’ and your chance of finding one is as good as the next person’s. As an added incentive for the relic-hunting readers, I found some R. Bell & Co match tins in the ruins of a tin mining camp in this area.

The harsh, hot climate makes short work of the temporary, low-cost living quarters the mining camps provided back in the mining heyday. Finding such a site, searching, and waving a metal detector proves there are interesting treasures to be found in the most unexpected places, and it is sad to see little bits of our history is being lost to the elements.

This story about hunting for Topaz and Diamonds appeared in a previous issue of Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story and Photos by Jenni Clark & Leigh Twine.

The post Topaz & Diamond Hunting in Australia first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

An Offer to Visit a Chrysoprase Mine

It happened that my friend Randy Polk, a top jewelry artist, was at a show looking for gem material with “gumdrop colors.” He found a dealer selling fine chrysoprase stone. The dealer also owned the chrysoprase mine and was looking for someone to help with publicity.

Randy told him about the articles I was doing for Rock and Gem. The owner, Ellie Christianos, got in touch with me and offered to bring Carol and me to Australia to visit the mine and write about it.

It took me a few seconds to say “Yes!”

Two months later we were at the mine.

Australian Chrysoprase

It may have been used by the ancients but the first productive deposit was opened in the Middle Ages in what is now Poland. This is the world’s largest deposit of chrysoprase which occurred in the ultramafic rocks which were the source of the nickel that gives chrysoprase its lovely green color.

The chrysoprase you see today is mainly from Queensland. That’s because the better chrysoprase deposits are in Australia in Queensland in the east and Kookynie near Kalgoorlie in the west.

The deposit near Kookynie was working full bore when I was there but the last I heard it is involved in legal matters and not producing. The mine is in the far Outback about 100 kilometers east of Perth.

Arriving in Australia

Carol and I were met at the Perth airport by Ellie’s lawyer who checked us into an elegant hotel before he took us to Ellie’s penthouse overlooking the Swan River.

After a day in Perth, we were flown to Kalgoorlie, a big gold camp with gorgeous Victorian-style buildings. The gold mine, an open pit and underground workings, was still operating. There our guide rented a car for the two-hour drive out to the mine, dodging kangaroos and emus on the way!

The road was dirt and crossed the outback desert. Many vehicles in the outback have what is called a “roo bar,” a heavy large steel fence-like bumper on the front to protect it from impact with kangaroos or cattle.

Chrysoprase, which is chalcedony with an assortment of nickel salts in it to give it a green color, formed in the thick veins of rock that make up the entire hill. Most of the rock is iron oxide goethite that’s not hard, so mining was relatively simple. They did not use explosives only a D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer with a huge ripping hook or finger on the back.

The ‘cat’ would traverse the hill up one side and down the other ripping up rocks veined with green chalcedony chrysoprase.

Following the ‘Cat’

The rocks were loaded with veins of green chalcedony that were broken into chunks by the dozer. The miners just followed behind the dozer with a hammer and buckets to gather the loose chunks of the green gem. In this way, they had mined tons of chrysoprase and the hill showed no signs of running out of gem material.

To collect, Carol and I followed the ‘cat’ picking and choosing the better dark green specimens and chipping off chunks of the better gem specimens. The only problem I had was choosing which pieces to pick up keeping in mind we were flying back to the U.S.

Once collected by miners, the gem-filled buckets of material were hauled off to another area of the camp and spread out for ease of sorting according to color and quality. The very best gem pieces were set aside for later pricing. The pieces of only good to average color were left in the open and priced lower.

I was told that area held no less than 10 tons of rough waiting for sorting and sale.

Choosing Specimens

When Carol and I had filled our collecting buckets, we took them back to camp and washed the specimens so we could sort through them. I set aside only the better pieces and returned the rest to the company stash. Later I returned to the hill and did more collecting in the untouched areas to get a better idea of the deposit and the material.

Ellie had already told us we could help ourselves. When I finally had what I thought was a fair amount of the best gem rough, I thanked Ellie. He expressed surprise at the small amount of gem chrysoprase I had.

When I mentioned my luggage problem, he offered to ship everything to me in Arizona so we added a bit more and he shipped it all.

I did spend some time walking around the area and noted several prospect holes where earlier prospectors had checked the deposit. It was pretty obvious the area was rich in potential as there were veins of chrysoprase exposed.

Visiting an Australian Pub

One evening, the miners asked if we wanted to go to a local pub. They piled us into a big 4×4 with a roobar and off we went at breakneck speed across the desert.

If there was a road I could not see it. We pulled up in front of a shack with a rusty corrugated metal roof and a single gas pump in front. This shack was the pub.

The building had two rooms separated by a liquor bar between them that faced into both rooms. Each side of the bar had four stools occupied by the dirtiest-looking miners I’ve ever seen. They worked in the local gold mine where the dirt and rocks are a rich brick red color. Water was scarce so washing was a sometimes thing. They were great guys, very friendly. They couldn’t stop telling stories and tales. One of them had just married off his daughter so he had to tell us all about the parade and wedding which was interesting in such a desolate area. A couple of dart boards hung on the wall and one wall had a heavy black line painted on it which was the high water mark when they had a rare rain storm. We had quite an evening there!

Chrysoprase Buyers

Another day a buyer from China showed up and spent a lot of time walking over the material in the sorting area. He was looking to make a big purchase. I learned they had two factories in China with about 7,000 women at lapidary machines carving objects of green chrysoprase, which I suspect was passed off as “jade.” I was amazed when he placed an order for 55 tons of the low-to-medium-grade chrysoprase.

When we left Western Australia we stayed in Sidney as Ellie’s guests. We checked out the zoo and the famous opera house then flew on to Hawaii for three days. When Carol and I got home, we immediately shared the chrysoprase with folks in our mineral club and gave the best pieces to Randy Polk who had gotten us the invitation. All in all, it was quite a rock hound trip!

This story about chrysoprase stone previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Bob Jones.

The post Finding Chrysoprase Stone in Australia first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Deep in the Southwestern Australia outback is the Beta Hunt nickel mine. It is located in the Kambolda district, and is owned and operated by RNC Minerals. For years the mine has produced significant quantities of nickel-metal ore and gold as a second ore.

The mine is about 400 miles (630 km) from Perth in what is known as the Kalgoorlie Goldfields, which since the late 1800s has yielded millions of dollars in gold. When I visited Kalgoorlie, I was impressed by its lovely Victorian-style buildings.

Discovery of the Deposit

The Beta Hunt nickel deposit was discovered in 1966 in the Norseman-Wiluna greenstone belt rich in many metal deposits. The host rocks at the Beta Hunt mine consist of ultramafic rocks with talc-carbonate and serpentine formations. The ores occur in more or less parallel veins rich in nickel with minor amounts of recoverable gold.

Nickel, number 28 on the Periodic Table of Elements, is important in steelmaking and has many uses beyond stainless steel and armor plate production. It is a minor component in some foods and important in the electrical industry for making batteries and household items like toasters and ovens.

Little did the miners at the Beta Hunt deposit realize while mining nickel ore in 2018 they would suddenly be converted from being nickel miners to gold miners. It started on Father’s Day 2018 when a quartz vein rich in gold was encountered during mining. Examples of gold suitable as specimens were recovered. But that find only proved to be a preview of what was to become in September of that year. Working the same vein at the 1600-foot level, a real golden treasure, some call it a miracle, was revealed.

The miracle discovery happened when miner Henry Dole, was doing his job of drilling and blasting the vein when the blast he set off exposed an amazing sight once the dust and gases cleared. Instead of just another pile of fractured and broken nickel ore, he saw a huge pile of broken white quartz with bright yellow crystalline gold sticking out! He had exposed a white quartz vein loaded with native gold, a true miracle.

Bringing the Lode to the Surface

As one would expect, the miners set about bringing the rich gold lode to the surface. Huge chunks of gold shot through white quartz were carried away and hoisted out. Some pieces were two and three feet across, and it took two or three men to carry and prepare them for hoisting. The largest piece weighed in at nearly 200 pounds with gold aplenty, while another big chunk weighed in at 132 pounds. It took four days to clean out the quartz vein. The miners estimated the gold-rich area they had mined measured about 10 by 10 feet.

The find caused an immense stir in the camp as officials tried to figure out how much gold they had and what to do with it. Should the gold ore go to the crusher or be saved as specimen gold? The Beta Hunt RNC officials showed great foresight. Rather than destroying these glittering treasures, they chose to preserve them as specimens. This meant the specimens had to be prepared for the museum and specimen market so folks could enjoy them for centuries to come. Preparation meant that as much quartz as possible had to be removed to expose as much gold as possible.

As for values, it was possible to determine the gold content of the quartz gold, but this was complicated by the sheer size of some of the quartz pieces. One commonly used method is to x-ray the specimen since the metallic gold would show up as a black image in a gray rock background. But mines don’t make a practice of having x-rays machines on the premises. The next best method is to use specific gravity testing to get a close estimate of gold content. This technique could be done right in the mine. Each specimen was checked by specific gravity testing and estimates of the gold content were made.

The totals were breathtaking as the gold retrieved from that 10 by 10-foot area pocket was estimated to contain something around 9,000 ounces of the yellow metal. Even at a conservative estimate, that’s not bad for four days’ work. Just using the spot price of gold as a guide they estimated they had something like $15 million in gold on their hands (see the accompanying chart). Security at the mine was immediately increased. This answered the question of smelter or specimen market. The latter was an obvious choice.

Greek Gravity History

If you are not familiar with the specific gravity test, it was the brainchild of the Greek Archimedes who was born in Syracuse, Sicily, in 287 BCE. As a brilliant mathematician, he worked on many problems, one of which resulted in his discovery of specific gravity testing.

Archimedes was asked to determine if a gold crown made for King Hebron was pure gold or if the maker substituted silver for some of the gold and made a cheaper gold-silver alloy crown. The problem stumped Archimedes, but legend has it, one day while taking a bath, he realized the amount of water his body displaced might be the solution.

According to legend, he leaped out of the bath and ran naked down the street shouting “Eureka, I found it!” That seems unlikely, but what he did discover was by submerging an object in water, the amount of water displaced sets up a ratio between the actual weight of the object in the air and the weight of the water displaced.

The purity of the gold caused minor variations in the results, but this is still an easy way to check what we call the specific gravity of an object.

When the folks at Beta Hunt started checking the quartz-gold specimens, they were, to say the least, pleased! The nearly 200-pound piece, which required three or four men to lift and carry, was checked and estimated to hold about 2,300 ounces of gold. Now, I’m no mathematician, but by multiplying that number by the current spot price of gold, which has been fluctuating between $1,200 and $1,500 an ounce, I get an amazing result. The Beta Hunt staff also calculated the 132-pound quartz piece to hold 1,600 ounces of gold.

Single Super-Size or A Bunch of Chunks

But now that they knew the value of the gold, a second problem arose. Was the gold all one piece or just a bunch of small chunks scattered throughout the quartz? The larger the gold piece is in the quartz, the rarer and more valuable a display specimen it would be. Did they only have a lot of small specimens, or was the gold in each specimen connected? By removing the quartz was the gold going to fall out in pieces, or could it be exposed as a single spectacular array of the yellow metal?

Did the bigger specimens contain a few big museum-size pieces? One could send the specimens to the crusher and retrieve the thousands of ounces of gold and melt it into bars. Doing that would be easy, but would make every mineral collector and museum curator, including this writer, cringe and holler, NO!

Fortunately, cool heads at Beta Hunt-RNC prevailed and as it was realized that by submitting each specimen to a preparation laboratory, much of the quartz could be removed exposing as much of the gold as possible, which would make each specimen more saleable and valuable while creating something to behold when on display! But that raised another problem.

One can’t see inside the quartz to find where the gold is or if all the gold is connected as one huge piece or is many disconnected small gold fragments. This is vital information so when one starts removing the quartz, the gold would stay together or would simply fall apart into smaller specimens as the quartz was removed. Ideally, the gold should be preserved as one spectacular piece.

To be sure, one of the larger specimens was finally shipped out to be x-rayed. Surprise, X-raying didn’t work. Instead of getting an x-ray picture showing the quartz as gray and gold as black images, the resulting picture was virtually all black. Eureka! Gold was everywhere! Now, what does one do? Not to worry.

There is another far less definitive method to determine if the gold is all connected, or a bunch of random fragments locked in and sticking out of the quartz. It is called an electrical conductivity test. When I worked as a car mechanic, we used two battery-powered electrical probes to find breaks in the wiring. That also works on hidden gold.

By touching gold sticking out of quartz, in two different exposed places, it’s possible to determine if they are connected. From that, you gradually draw a rough map of the interior of the quartz, which will help guide the expert in specimen preparation to start chipping, grinding or sandblasting away the quartz. This is all very time consuming but is a useful last resort in such instances.

Marketing the Gold

Once the decision was made to sell the gold as specimens, rather than smashing it into smelter feed, the company had a final problem of shipping the gold to the specimen lab in Denver for preparation by experts. As of this writing, the preparation work has finally begun, and we will report as things progress.

Another question to consider: once prepared for sale, how will these amazing

gold specimens be marketed? The mining company certainly was not equipped to get into the specimen sales market. So, RNC Beta Hunt decided to choose a couple of reputable mineral experts to do that for them. One well-known dealer company chosen to market the gold in quartz collector specimens is Unique Minerals. This group is highly regarded and regularly attend all of the major shows. Unique Minerals was also of great help in supplying information, data, and photos to this writer as I wrote this article. Maybe that’s because Unique Minerals is owned by Marc Miterman and my son Evan Jones, whom many readers know. A second dealer, Dr. Peter Megaw, was also chosen to represent the company.

Many people know Peter as the chairman of the Special Exhibit at the famous Tucson Gem and Mineral Show™. Be sure and look for any of these fellows as you attend the major shows in 2020, and enjoy the opportunity to view specimens from the amazing Father’s Day miracle of 2018.

We concluded this three-part series on gold in the March 2020 issue, as we describe the wonderful collection of crystallized gold from the Breckenridge area of Colorado in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. You’ll learn about “Tom’s Baby” and the story of Colorado’s most unusual gold specimen.

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