[Rockhounds] Mineral ID

[Tim Fisher]

I'm hoping one of the mineral gurus here can help me with a mystery. I
helped sort through part of an old rock collection on Saturday (most of the
wrapping newspapers were dated in the 70s) and came across hundreds of
specimens that I can't identify (which is most minerals lol). They were from
the estate of a rock, mineral, and shell hoarder. A couple really stood out,
I have a half decent photo of one of the best of them (I had very little
time to sort through and repackage hundreds of pieces). It's fibrous, dull
luster, creamy white, and incredibly fragile. Looks like an angel wing. It
was packed in a box in cotton balls and I still managed to break off a few
of the fibers. Shopping it around I got fibrous sepiolite and Ram's horn
selenite as possibilities. Maybe 10% of them were in perky boxes with
labels, most were wrapped in paper towels or tissue paper and thrown into
the box. Not to mention that I realized to my horror that some people were
unwrapping the specimens and throwing away the boxes L We only sorted
through 30 of 108 boxes so there's undoubtedly more to come. Our rock club
is selling the collection for the family of I'm concerned that we'll end up
practically giving them away to people who will generally have no idea what
they're looking at. I'm thinking Ebay is a better place to sell the best
ones (just guessing there are 20 or so that stand out to me from this first
run). This is as close as I can come online, it's identified as fibrous
sepiolite.

 

https://farm8.static.flickr.com/7113/7842703084_595691a69c_b.jpg

 

Tim Fisher

Orerockon.com