Khyber Minerals

Khyber Minerals This page is about minerals, crystals, mineral collecting and sharing the beauty of mineralogy from

Hello everyone, I just posted a group of minerals to the website— this one has a mix of stuff from around the world. Som...
02/10/2024

Hello everyone, I just posted a group of minerals to the website— this one has a mix of stuff from around the world. Some old calcites from Dongpo with clear growth tubes, a new find of Chinese “ruby jack”, a few Washington zeolites, clear Chinese fluorite, and some random old collection pieces, among other things. The specimens can be viewed here:

http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/113/

New website update posted! Just over 40 mixed Chinese specimens (and one from Congo), including some pretty fluorites, a...
10/09/2023

New website update posted! Just over 40 mixed Chinese specimens (and one from Congo), including some pretty fluorites, a new find of greenockite, a fantastic old azurite, some plumbogummite, and more! The specimens can be viewed at: http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/110/

I just posted nearly 60 Yindu fluorites from various pockets to the website, if you have the time, they can be seen here...
08/17/2023

I just posted nearly 60 Yindu fluorites from various pockets to the website, if you have the time, they can be seen here:

http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/108/

Once again, these show why I like this mine so much— the appearances and colors are so varied. Pretty phantoms (some so sharp they could downright be described as fluorite included fluorite), spinel twins, and just a very wide assortment of colors

http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/105/A page of fluorites from the Bairendaba Deposit, generally referred to as ...
07/01/2023

http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/105/

A page of fluorites from the Bairendaba Deposit, generally referred to as the “Yindu Mine,” as the workings are controlled by the Yindu Mining Company. The Mineralogical Record recently published an article on this site, and while it provides excellent background information, I do feel that the images just scratched the surface of what this area has produced.

http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/105/

I first noticed specimens from Yindu around 2013—a dealer in Tucson who had been focusing on the nearby Huanggang mine happened to have one flat of blue/purple crystals on siderite matrixes, though unfortunately the surfaces were somewhat frosted, and the quality was not very high. Then around 2018 I started to see the now-familiar blues with the purple phantoms, followed by what someone decided to market as the “ghost eye” material (dark purple, with white zones near the centers, reminiscent of the “alien eye” material from Erongo), and the pyrhottite— this is what was mainly shown int he Mineralogical Record article. It was during the pandemic however, that the really weird (and I think most beautiful) material started to come out— bright colors, and combinations that I had never seen before.

With that said, I think this has become my favorite fluorite locality. It may sound like sacrilege to some, but the only other location that I can compare it to in terms of variation and color would be the southern Illinois Fluourspar District. While the specimens from the Yindu area rarely reach the same sizes (the average size for “good” crystals is usually under 2 cm) the variation of colors, habits, and the crazy internal features caused by successive generations of growth makes them more varied (and in my opinion much more interesting) than the vast majority of examples from other places. While they definitely have a certain “look” to them that makes them attributable to this deposit, I find that this locality seems to suffer less from the general uniformity that localities tend to produce— for example 98% of Yaogangxian will be blue or purple, material from the Spanish localities will almost always be Blue or Yellow, and so on. Unfortunately, the way they blast here seems to cause lots of damage— so finding perfectly clean ones is hard, particularly in the larger sizes. As such, miniatures and thumbnails are more easy to find. The other issue that many seem to have is that they will require backlighting— much like Okorusu or Erongo, (and I guess analogous to the Malagasy liddicoatite) the successive generations of growth tend to produce layering that makes it difficult for light (and therefor the individual colors) to come through— the second half of the update has this type.

http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/105/

A selection of over 60 specimens (all but 2 priced under $100) has just been posted to the clearance section of the webs...
07/04/2022

A selection of over 60 specimens (all but 2 priced under $100) has just been posted to the clearance section of the website. New specimens have CUU stock numbers and are on the first 2 pages! http://www.khyberminerals.com/clearance/

I have just posted a group of exceptional ludlamite specimens from a find made in late 2021-- you may have seen all the ...
06/09/2022

I have just posted a group of exceptional ludlamite specimens from a find made in late 2021-- you may have seen all the vivianite coming from Cabeca do Cachorro-- included in that discovery were a small number of very, very good ludlamites-- I'd say they are second only to the best from Huanuni. The specimens can be viewed here:
http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/92/

Over 100 new specimens posted to the website, the first is a page of around 30 mixed specimens, the second (link provide...
04/07/2022

Over 100 new specimens posted to the website, the first is a page of around 30 mixed specimens, the second (link provided at the bottom of the main update) is a page of over 70 minerals, all but 1 priced under $100.
http://www.khyberminerals.com/collections/88/

Over 100 new specimens posted to the website, the first is a page of around 30 mixed specimens, the second (link provide...
04/07/2022

Over 100 new specimens posted to the website, the first is a page of around 30 mixed specimens, the second (link provided at the bottom of the main update) is a page of over 70 minerals, all but 1 priced under $100.

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