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Luck of the Irish
Today, being St. Patrick's Day, I can't help but notice everyone decked out in green. And green can only remind me of emerald, which happens to be my birth stone. It's probably the first stone I could ever identify, probably the first I even knew the name of. But as I have started to learn more about Lithographie's catalogue and read about other minerals, I've learned that, as a layperson, identifying is not as easy as I would have thought. Just because it's green doesn't mean it's an emerald; just because it's maroon doesn't mean it's a garnet. I have already been blown away by people taking one quick look at a mineral that to me could be a quartz or could be zinc, and quickly identify it as something I've never heard of... and of course be right! I would love to know how you do it. Tell me about the minute coloring or structure that my novice eyes wouldn't notice. Explain the details that mean something to you but that I couldn't even pronounce the term for. Basically, wow me!
Maya
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Well, do some 20-30 years of field collecting, study specimens a few hours a day for 20-30 years, visit a few mineral shows a year, that is each time scan form a few ten thousand samples to literally hundreds of thousands...
And find the one or few localities, combinations, forms etc you did NOT see before.
If you ask a mineral collector if it is a betafite or a jeremejevite is like asking a musician if he knows if it is a ukulele or a pan fluit. Not so difficult.
In comparison to tasting wine it is not too difficult to say if it is a Rioja or a Burgender... but rather you can smell, even without tasting that this is a 1997 Wiltlinger Gottesfuss, collected a bit later than the usual, probably around 20 September 1997 and on the very steepest SW slope almost at the top.
An experienced collector can knows not only from which locality a specimen is coming, but perhaps knows much of the history, mining, geology, mineralogy, formation, discovery, mining, research on that particular vein, knows most of the pockets and what they yielded.
Have fun and after some 20 years you will discover how little you know!!!
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