Organize Your Collection, Please!

摘要

In recent months, I have had the opportunity to review and potentially purchase several mineral collections. In most cases, I was greatly disappointed and did not make an offer. The simple reason: a lack of locality labels. It is not that a knowledgeable dealer can't identify the minerals; in fact, for anyone in the trade for a number of years, it is often quite easy to put a mineral name on most collectible samples. But specimen value without a locality label? Ugh! While some samples will have obvious provenance, the amount of work involved in trying to determine localities on unlabeled specimens is simply a non-starter for me. A specimen without locality provenance is just a curiosity, in my opinion, and its value is greatly diminished as a result.