So, you may be asking yourself, what exactly is today's mineral collecting market? Confusion about this is understandable, especially when you frequently hear or read phrases such as these:

"Super piece uncommon on today's market."

"Rare on today's market!"

"Collected around 100 years ago and is as fine as can be found in today's mineral market."

"In today's mineral collecting market these specimens are becoming more difficult to get."

"Very difficult to replace, especially in today's market."

Having read similar statements thousands of times, it occurred to me that many people probably don't know exactly what "today's market" means. So, here are some thoughts on what that market is, how it works, and what it means to you, the collector of fine mineral specimens.

A TRUE STORY
I'll start with this instructive (and true) story about marketing of Mexican bipyramidal wulfenites. It is a classic tale, illuminating the behind-the-scenes wheeling & dealing that is characteristic of several recent, extremely high-priced recent finds:

In late December, 2007, less than a month before the Tucson Show, the Mexican specimen mining cooperative working the famed Mina Ojuela, Mapimi, Durango, Mexico locality made an incredible discovery. They retrieved from a single, large pocket on Level 6 about 12 banana boxes of richly colored butterscotch wulfenites exhibiting the rare bipyramidal habit. Amazingly, these were totally different from anything ever seen before from either Mexico or Arizona! The crystals feature elongated bipyramidal crystals to about 2 cm, usually showing tapered terminations ending in sharp points. These were reminiscent of some Tsumeb wulfenites that came out about 30 years ago. X-ray analysis proved these were wulfenites.

4.2" Yellow bipyramidal wulfenite crystals on green mimitite - Mapimi, Mexico

A Tucson-based dealer received a call from Mapimi in late December asking if he wanted to buy a lot (about 4 banana boxes full of crystals) of unusual wulfenites. He said to send them up. This was one of three lots sold to dealers with the right connections to receive the calls from Mexico. Lot #2 ended up in the hands of a very high-end dealer, who we'll call Mr. Big Time. Lot #3 went to another dealer. Immediately after seeing the specimens in his lot (#2), Mr. Big decided to try to buy the other two lots, in order to corner the market and control prices. After buying Lot #3, he approached the first dealer and offered to buy Lot #1 as well. After much negotiation, the first dealer sold the top 100 specimens from the lot, and hung onto the rest to offer to his. So, Mr. Big ended up with the lion's share of the new wulfenites, including all the best ones. Since he had a monopoly, he priced the best of them for from $1,000 up to about $10,000.

This is a good example of how the pricing structure for the best new finds of really exciting material is determined. It also gives some insight into why the prices for new, important mineral finds are often so high. Perhaps most amazing of all is that buyers lined up in droves at Mr. Bag's displays in Tucson to plunk down their dollars to buy the new wulfenites!

16 FACTORS IMPACTING THE FINE MINERAL MARKET
Aside from this rather unpleasant story about a wheeler-dealer mineral dealer gaining control of the market, there are many other factors that affect the fine mineral marketplace. Naturally, some of these have driven prices up, but many have had very positive impacts on both availability and price.

1. Strong Demand
Until about the 1950s, you had to be a member of the exclusive society of either the aristocracy or the very wealthy to pursue an interest in mineral collecting. The post-WWII growth of a middle class with automobiles and disposable income led to an explosion of mineral clubs in the U.S. These clubs often went on field trips, but also began to hold mineral shows to raise money and to attract new members, and thus the U.S. mineral market was born. Today, mineral collecting is more popular than ever, as collectors have access to mineral specimens in a wide range of varieties, price and quality. The growth in demand that comes with this increased interest has fueled the growth of today's fine mineral market

2. Creation of an Internet Marketplace
Going hand-in-hand with the rapid increase in widespread ease of access to the internet is the corresponding explosive growth in the numbers of online mineral dealers. This was probably the biggest change ever in the entire history of mineral collecting.

In the late 1990's and early 2000's, eBay's emerged overnight as a household name and achieved near-total dominance of the on-line auction market. This phenomenon fueled internet mineral sales. At the same time, rapidly dropping prices for increasingly sophisticated digital cameras further stimulated online mineral sales, as dealers could now afford to buy the tools needed to create high-quality photos of their specimens. Buying online did not attract an immediate following amongst the old school, sophisticated buyers, who preferred to buy at shows where they could hold a specimen in their own hands and see the crystals for themselves. This has evolved and gained widespread acceptance as buyers began to appreciate the ease of online shopping as well as the variety of species available in a wide range of prices and quality levels.

3. New Worldwide Markets
The rapidly expanding economies in China and Asia have created new upper and middle classes with extra money to spend on minerals. In Europe, the strength of the Euro has made mineral specimens available at bargain prices. Facilitated by the internet, the emergence of a worldwide mineral market as worked to increase demand and encourage competition.

4. Improved Collecting Techniques
Today, dealers offer fewer damaged specimens for sale than ever before. Part of this is the increased awareness among mineral collectors of the importance of condition. Though still appealing to new collectors and people with limited budgets, buyers today covet specimens that are in near-"perfect" condition. This demand has created pressure on specimen miners to exercise more caution while collecting, resulting in a higher percentage of undamaged specimens. For example, in the late 1990's in Tucson, Chinese dealers were offering lots of Chinese specimens of fantastic quality; unfortunately, they had dinged or damaged crystals. Buyers educated the Chinese dealers, and they passed the word back to the miners, who began to be more careful. In some cases, the "training" was as simple as telling them to wrap the specimens in newspaper, rather than just tossing them all together into a sack!

In addition, specimen miners are now able to buy some amazing new tools. One example is the diamond chain saw, which Bryan Lees of Collector's Edge pioneered in his specimen-mining venture at the Sweet Home Mine in Colorado. Another is the Ezebreak Micro Blaster, a compact and portable demolition system for drilling and blasting rock. Mineral dealer/specimen miner John Cornish has had excellent success with this equipment, and is now an authorized dealer.

A diamond chainsaw cuts through cement and steel - photo courtesy of PriorityPlant.com

5. Better Specimen Preparation
Preparation is the process revealing the true beauty of a mineral specimen by cleaning and/or restoration. Trimming, washing, dipping in acids, making repairs, reinforcing, and polishing are just some of the many methods used. Very few specimens are offered for sale that have not received some combination of treatments.

In recent years, new, improved techniques for specimen preparation have set a new standard for specimen quality. Micro-sandblasters, precision trimmers, innovative chemical processes, and more have greatly expanded the arsenal of tools available to specimen preparation experts. The result: today there are a higher proportion of undamaged, aesthetic specimens available today than ever before.

6. More Specimen Mining Companies
In recent years, mineral collectors have benefited from a new type of enterprise: specialty-mining groups. Specimen miner/dealers organize these groups to explore for top-notch specimens from classic localities. Sometimes, organizers invite investors to participate, especially wealthy collectors who provide financial support in exchange for top pick among the specimens collected.

This new type of mining, which aims solely to extract mineral specimens for sale, was largely pioneered by Bryan Lees of Collectors Edge, in Golden Colorado. His big success story was the project at the Sweet Home mine, in Alma Colorado. Lees made this locality famous for producing the world's best rhodochrosite specimens. Others have followed in Lees footsteps, and Collectors Edge has also run several other noteworthy operations for orpiment in Nevada, and most recently for emeralds in Zambia.

1.5" Gemmy red rhodochrosite crystal with ferberite - Good Luck Pocket, Sweet Home Mine, CO

7. Ore-Mining Companies Looking for New Revenue Sources
In the past, ore-mining companies focused on one thing only: getting the highest production of ore possible, and getting it to market at the lowest possible cost. Today, fortunately, an increasing number of mining companies are paying more attention to finding and extracting the potentially valuable mineral specimens they encounter. This can be as simple as signing collecting contracts with specimen mining companies, or as complex as organizing their own specialized collecting and marketing team. One example of the contract approach is the now-famous world-class golden barite from the Meikle Mine in Nevada. Casey and Jane Jones of Geoprime Minerals acquired the specimen recovery contract at the Meikle Mine, and collected quantities of this aesthetic material. Another example occurred in China, where mine operators "discovered" specimen mining as a way to increase income when profits were squeezed by falling commodity prices and increasing government regulation. Whatever way this happens, the result is an increased supply of quality mineral specimens on the world market.

3.2" Gemmy golden barite crystals - Rusty Bucket Pocket, Meikle Mine, NV

8. New Mining & Refining Technologies
New mining equipment and techniques can make undeveloped prospects profitable to mine almost overnight. Similarly, new refining technologies can increase the yield from uneconomic deposits enough to make it attractive for ore mining companies to bring new mines into production. Of course, more mining means more potential for new specimen (and sometimes, new species) discoveries, which are often of great interest to mineral collectors.

9. Higher Commodities Prices
Similar to new mining and refining techniques, when the price of minerals such as copper, zinc, silver and gold go up, more mining is done, leading to the potential for more mineral specimens being found and making their way to market.

10. New Discoveries
Today, mining companies are constantly investing in mineral exploration in countries around the world, which leads to the discovery of new localities. The discovery of azurite "suns" in Sometimes, companies bring old mines back into production after geologist document new reserves. Either way, when mining commences at these localities, fresh material becomes available on the market, offering buyers new, exciting choices.

3" Royal blue azurite sun on white matrix from the recent find at the new Kalkunka Copper Mine, Central Australia

11. Recycling Of Old Collections
Dealers sell specimens from one of three sources: either they are new material which came from recent mining efforts, or they are older specimens which were stashed in some dealer's warehouse, or they come from individuals' collections, which may been built over a lifetime of collecting.

All too often, fine old collections end up in a dumpster, due to the ignorance of the collector's heirs, or to lack of planning on the part of the collector. When a collector's 2nd cousin inherits a collection and finds it in the basement wrapped in newspaper in a bunch of old dusty boxes, the odds of it going straight to the landfill are high. If the collector kept no labels or records, then all that remains is, a bunch of old rocks, which, without labels are worth a tiny fraction of what they might have been worth. Even if the owner kept meticulous records, too many times the boxes of paperwork go into the trash, and a potential buyer finds himself looking at nothing more than boxes of pretty rocks with no idea what they are or where they came from.

Today, savvy collectors are well aware of these risks, and so arrange to have their collections dispersed before they die. Right now is a good time to sell a valuable old collection, especially because the prices for exceptional mineral specimens have risen so dramatically in the last few decades. When purchasing a collection, the dealer must have enough capital to do so. So, he usually pays only a percentage of what the collection is worth because of the risk of tying up large amounts of cash for a long time. If sold on consignment, the seller often gets more for his specimens, because the dealer isn't laying out a lot of cash.

1" Blue bladed azurite crystals - Tsumeb Namibia, collected 1971

12. Disappearing Classic and Type Localities
When a mine is having its heyday, mineral specimens are often both abundant and cheap. Think of the Tsumeb Mine in Namibia back in the 1970's, when exquisite specimens of dioptase were readily available. When the mine closed in 1987, production stopped, the pumps shut down, and the shafts filled with water. The supply was so abundant that it took years for the specimen pipeline to empty, but once it did, dioptase prices escalated rapidly. Today, a specimen that cost $50 in the 1980's will cost you $1,000 or more. A more recent example is the closing of the southern Illinois fluorite mines in the early 1990's. At one time, the Cave-In-Rock area produced hundreds of thousands of specimens and large collections blossomed. Now, buyers must pay premium prices for the best material from this area.

2.5" Purple in blue phantom fluorite crystals - Minerva Mine #1, IL

The same thing happens when a type locality closes (a type locality is the place at which the first known example of a species was found). Once abundant mineral specimens disappear rapidly from the market and become "endangered species," and are thereafter only available when old collections are recycled.

13. Increased Awareness of the Importance of Provenance
Even if it's only because of the success of the Antique Roadshow TV program, there's no denying that provenance as become a growing focus amongst mineral collectors. The word "obsession" springs to mind when you mention the word "collector." That means its no surprise that meticulous collectors have recorded a wealth of detail about not only what mineral species are present on a specimen, but also the precise location where it was found (sometimes including the mine level where it was recovered), who collected it, who sold it (at what price), who owned it, and more. Today, acquiring specimens with historic labels - especially from well-known collectors and classic localities - has become a whole new sub-specialty for many mineral collectors, which makes these specimens more desirable, and thus more expensive.

14. Rising Interest among Auctions Houses
In the early 2000's, major auction houses in the U.S. and Europe began to hold auctions of fine mineral specimens, rare gemstones, and other natural history collectibles.

Their success has led to imitation, and today there are more auctions of high-quality specimens than ever before. Interestingly, this has piqued the interest of investor-collectors who see the purchase of a fine mineral specimen as an investment, to take advantage of rapidly rising prices especially in the very high-end mineral market.

15. Scholarly Study
Thanks to scholarly work at colleges and universities throughout the world, new minerals are identified, named and classified every day, and are added to the list of over 5,000 known mineral species.

16. Market Saturation
This is one of those fortuitous (for mineral collectors) economic principles: When supply exceeds demand, prices go down. So, when there are more malachite specimens than there are buyers, prices drop to more affordable levels. Smart buyers stock up when the market is down. It might seem that there will always be high demand for such attractive specimens from an old classic locality. That is, until someone discovers a new locality which produces specimens that eclipse the old standard, and suddenly no one wants the old stuff at all.

CONCLUSIONS
These (and many more) factors have had a dramatic and very positive impact on the quality, appearance, and number of aesthetic, high quality mineral specimens available today to the collector. And, even though prices have continued to rise (fortunately not like the price of gas), it is still possible to selectively build a noteworthy mineral collection, even on a limited budget. Thinking about the current state of affairs for us mineral collectors, I recently walked across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan with my family. There I was greeted by a large sign welcoming me to Brooklyn that declared to the entire world, "How sweet it is!" (to quote the famed comedian Jackie Gleason's best-known line). So true!

All mineral photos by Eric Greene of Treasure Mountain Mining specimens