Mark's Minerals | Community
Mark's Minerals
Phone: +61 452 647 243
Reviews
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25.01.2022 Just for something a little different. LED colour changing bases to sit under your crystals, spheres, etc. Currently, ONLY available at our market stall.
25.01.2022 I just had this sent through to me, what a wonderful way to set out a collection of miniature specimens. Thank you to Mathew for sending this through. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch
23.01.2022 Highlights from out latest uploads. https://www.marksminerals.com.au/m/azurite-nodule-mms-5080/
22.01.2022 If you collect Spring Creek specimens, you should head over to Steve Sorrell's site, and purchase this Collector's Guide to Spring Creek. A good read, and some great photos of some of the minerals present at the mine. :)
19.01.2022 Let’s end 2020 on a bright and shiny note! For the month of December, we are bringing out collection items that have some #Bling! First off, this impressive... group of quartz crystals from the White Rock Quarry in the Mount Lofty Ranges it has some serious #Bling-factor with a mohawk of crystals on top of the larger crystal. The quarries of the Adelaide Hills Face are world-renowned for their exceptional colourless and clear quartz crystals which are highly prized by collectors. Quartz is a very hard mineral (7 on Mohs scale of hardness) and is composed of atoms of silicon and oxygen arranged into a crystal lattice which produces its classic characteristic hexagonal shape. Small amounts of chemical impurities in this crystal lattice produce a range of colours favoured in the gem industry, such as amethyst and citrine. This quartz was purchased by the Museum in 2006 and is now part of our Mineralogy Collection. #Bling #ContentForConnection with #mySAMuseum #SAMCollections #Crystal #Quartz #MountLoftyRanges #AdelaideHills #Lattice See more
18.01.2022 I hope everyone is doing the best possible during these trying times. I know personally, it has been quite a struggle each day, for various reasons. As a result, I am behind in some of our website plans, especially the mineral photos (that includes photos for our Facebook sales group). I'm hoping to be caught up soon, and we can get things heading back in the right direction. Stay safe everyone. :)
17.01.2022 We’re really excited to kick off our digital school holiday program ‘Wonders from the Earth’ and to celebrate #MineralMonday (of course!). Today we take you on... a tour of our much-loved mineral gallery with Ben McHenry, Senior Collection Manager, Earth Sciences. Tune in and tell us in the comments, what’s your favourite mineral? View the full program here: https://bit.ly/3apJotE
16.01.2022 It's been a long time coming! However, our new website is almost ready to go live! Stay tuned...
15.01.2022 Highlights from our latest uploads. https://www.marksminerals.com.au/mi/native-silver-mms-5192/
15.01.2022 One of the most popular exhibits at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show this year was the incredible "Dragon's Lair Gold" specimen from the Beta Hunt Mine in Kambalda..., Australia. Weighing over 920 ounces, this is one of the largest gold specimens in the world, and was expertly prepared by our mineral laboratory staff Zack Giuliani (left) and Rob Lorda (right) over a period of about 4 months. Removing the quartz matrix from this huge gold specimen took hundreds of hours of mainly mechanical work with small pneumatic scribe tools. The specimen is now in the Pinnacle Collection. Riley Owen photo. See more
15.01.2022 For those wanting to find a Gem and Mineral Club near them, here in South Australia. Here is a link to the full list of South Australian Clubs. Let me know if you have trouble opening it, and I'll do a list up for everyone. 1http://aflaca.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/17-directory-GMCASA-clubs.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2wQ9Wr34ptskHDwIQqL50gAVNCGZO0egc6hfRvNtwzK_jU2Z469hrNbEw
14.01.2022 We will soon be adding a mixture of location specific, and mixed location sets (miniature specimens) to our website.We will soon be adding a mixture of location specific, and mixed location sets (miniature specimens) to our website.
11.01.2022 A small selection of the specimens you will find available when our new website goes live! Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the launch!
08.01.2022 Highlights from our latest uploads. https://www.marksminerals.com.au/mineral/gaspeite-mms-5017/
08.01.2022 Imagine opening your presents tomorrow to see this #Bling-tastic brooch! South Australia is famed for being the birthplace of the Australian mining industry ...- our nation’s first mine was opened at Glen Osmond in 1841. During the second half of the 19th century, South Australia was known around the world as The Copper Kingdom for our world-class copper deposits at Kapunda, Burra and the Copper Triangle on the Yorke Peninsula. So rich were these ores that at one stage in 1855 the Burra Mine was producing 10% of the world copper supply! But did you know we have an equally famous gold history? Australia’s first gold mine was not in the eastern states at all it was right here at Castambul in the Adelaide Hills, opened in 1846, 5 years before the discovery of gold at Bathurst in NSW in 1851. Gold was always in demand in the early days of our state with further finds sprinkled through the Mount Lofty Ranges. A gold rush in the Barossa Valley in 1868 saw more than 6000 miners descend upon the goldfield in a matter of weeks. The alluvial field produced almost 50,000 oz of gold over the next 3 years, worth in excess of $130 million in today's terms! There are few remaining pieces of jewellery that exist from the era of the Australian gold rush in the 19th century. The South Australian Museum is very fortunate to have in its mineral collections, such a piece of early Australian #Bling. Crafted by the German-born Adelaide silversmith Charles Edward Firnhaber sometime in the 1870s, this brooch features not only Barossa Valley gold but also Burra malachite possibly the first representation of our now common national colours the green and gold! #Bling #ContentForConnection with #mySAMuseum #SAMCollections #Gold #Malachite #Minerals #Mineralogy #Mining #Brooch #GreenAndGold #BarossaValley #Burra See more
06.01.2022 If you're a member of our sales group, stayed tuned!
06.01.2022 Who would like some out of this world news? We’ve just transported the main body of the Huckitta meteorite to the Adelaide Planetarium at Mawson Lakes, w...hich will go on public display when they reopen to the public. At 4.5 billion years old it is older than Earth () and is a very rare type of meteorite which caused global excitement in 1937 when it was retrieved from a cattle station. It is a pallasite, meaning it is composed of roughly equal amounts of iron and silicate. The Huckitta is one of the only few pallasites to ever be recovered worldwide. The Museum has a sample on display in the minerals and meteorites gallery, but the main bulk (916kg worth) has been stored in our science centre since the late 1930s. Here the meteorite is being cut on a specially made diamond saw in 1938. The stony-iron was so hard it took 130 hours to make two cuts, at a rate of about one cm an hour! See more
05.01.2022 Just a few minor bugs to sort out, and we can finally go live with our new website. It's been a little more of a challenge than we thought it would, but the end result is going to be well worth the effort. We'll announce our launch date later this week. :)
05.01.2022 The start of our new logo.
05.01.2022 I was just notified of this image being posted as 'Photo of the Day' on Mindat.org. If you click on the image, you can go to the site, and see all the images of this specimen. :)
04.01.2022 Sometime in the distant future an archaeologist finds proof of the urban legend which was 2020...!
04.01.2022 We have noticed Cavansite and Pentagonite specimens from India, are now starting to increase dramatically in price. This is due to the quarries imminent closing, to make way for housing developments. We will endeavour to keep our Cavansite and Pentagonite on Mark's Minerals priced as they currently are, to maintain a well-priced option for collectors.
04.01.2022 While we were hoping to officially launch our website tomorrow (1st Nov. 2020), we are still having a few issues with a small glitch. As soon as we have this sorted we will be announcing our launch.
03.01.2022 It's #MineralMonday! Turquoise has been sought after for thousands of years as a semi-precious gemstone, used by people all around the globe in jewellery ma...king. The mines at Iron Knob on Eyre Peninsula have produced some striking examples like this one pictured. Turquoise gets its name from the French for Turkish turquois as this was where the first specimens came to reach Europe in the 17th century. #MySAMuseum #turquoise See more
01.01.2022 Some of the latest additions to our website. https://www.marksminerals.com.au/
