February 2004 Newsletter
This year is already on it's way and I have not yet send out a newsletter. I apologize to those of you who have waited for one. So what is new? Tucson is on and this year we opted not to go. I am off to India in two weeks. India land of color and incense. We hope to buy some items that will be suitable for resale in my stores. Annalie and me are really looking forward to it. We will be there until the 7th of March 2004. I took on more staff to cope with the demand. On the website listings we have Carel working for us. He has studied for three years towards his teachers degree. But decided to come and work for us for a season or two. You will notice many more items going up on the website now. I am now more free to source new items. Apart from my India trip we are planning a trip to Namibia at the end of March. We will go and look for dioptase. I hope we get a good parcel. There is a staff change at the Welwitchia Country market shop. Galya will take over at this shop. Jeanette has gone on retirement. We are sorry to loose her. Galya has years of experience selling crystals with Graham at the Randburg Waterfront. She is also a fundi on the metaphysical side of rocks. I bought a 2000 piece collection two days ago. A wide variety of good minerals were in this collection, mostly Tsumeb, many have Silver Hills Mining labels. So I divided the pile into three lots. The one lot goes to my shop. The other one will be listed on the website and the last one will be placed in our auction site. Expect some great stuff to go on auction. In case you did not know, our new auction site address is www.bidonrocks .com. This site has now been upgraded and it is much faster than before. We try and list something for everyone. We lost some customers due to a mistake I made. I accidently deleted all the info in an attempt to make more space available. A slip of the finger or shall I say the mouse. Well I regretted it and still do. It was like starting from scratch. Next time I will ask the experts to clean up the site. If you are one of the people who can not log in anymore I ask that you please sign-up again. I promise not to loose your details again. What will we be trading this year.? Sugilite when we get it. At the moment the quality of stuff that is seen is so poor that I refuse to touch it. Tourmaline in all grades. Exotic roughs such as euclase, pietersite, stichtite, bustamite, richterite and many others. I search these out and pride myself on the variety that I am able to bring to the market. I also hope to mine some specimens myself in our wintertime. The mining site has extreme temperatures in the summer. Up to 50 degrees in the shade in summer but bearable in the winter. This is one of the sites where we hope to find good specimens of prehnite and barite. I do not know why the best stuff is always in the worst possible places.  We can not even get a compressor close to the site. I might be venturing into Angola this year for supply. Angola is one of those unexplored localities. I saw some stuff this morning and it looked promising. I also plan to visit Mozambique in the not too distant future. We will trade Kalahari Manganese specimens, I visit Kuruman at least once a week. That is why we can consistently bring good specimens to the market from this site. I am exploring some quartz sites in Zimbabwe and also one in the President Steyn mine in Welkom. This is a gold mine that was a specimen producing locality before. I look forward to dealings with all of you that reads this newsletter. This month we cover the following The Bid On Rocks Auction site 2003 in hindsight Mineral of the month. Barite and other strontium minerals. The cost of freight from South Africa.  Next month we will revert back to our old format with more articles that are useful. Be blessed as you read this newsletter. Gerdus

The Bid on Rocks Auction site

Auctions are a great way to sell items. The market determines the prices that an item will sell for. It also allows everybody to list and sell the excess stock they have without the need for a large website. I am a trader. and as a trader we sell not just excess but very good stuff as well. The return business we get from month to month is a proof of the quality we sell on this site. The awkward thing always remain the determination of the right value for any product. Auction sites allow you to see how people value certain items. A scarce item might end up at a higher value. The best advice I can give is to decide what you want to buy and then to only bid that amount. Many items ends up with only one bidder. You might be lucky enough to pick up the item for a bargain. As a person living on the other side of the world we have certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is the close proximity to so much good stuff that we can sell. The disadvantage is the cost of freight from where we are. The other advantage of buying straight from the supplier is the low prices that you pay. We have chosen not to be in Tucson this year and the savings in cost we can now pass on to our buyers in the form of lower prices. I choose the Addonauction software because of the simplicity and versatility of the software. As the moderator I am able to get reports on many important statistics. The admin side of the software is very easy to use. As a buyer you first need to register. The info we ask is straightforward. None of the info will be used by anyone. Only I can access it. Your e-mail address is safe with us. I know how scary the internet can be. Just venture into the wrong sites and boy they are unto you. It sometimes feels like walking in a maize. When some people get hold of your e-mail address they sell it to everybody. Your details are safe with us. Once you have registered I will activate your account. You are then free to list items or buy items on our auction site. When you buy from my listers Rockhound and Jinjan you will be able to stockpile stuff. But all items must be pay by the end of the month. If you are not sure about something please ask for more pictures or more detail and we will gladly provide it. The site is an international site. It is used by people from all over the world. Anybody can sell rocks on this site. Once you have registered it is as easy as ABC. You fill in a form and upload a picture and your items is there for anyone to buy. We only provide the space and can not be held responsible for any dealings between buyers and sellers. When we receive a complaint we will be forced to suspend a seller until the issues has been resolved. As a seller you will have to pay a final evaluation fee once the items is sold. Items selling for more than $ 500 have to pay 1% Commision to me. From $1-$50 the commision is 4%. From $50 to $500 the commission is 2%. These fees are payable at the end of each month. The server where I host the auction site has just acquired extra bandwidth. It will always remain fast. I know it was very slow a while ago but that has all now been resolved. The world is becoming a global village. The site is managed from the USA but it is maintained in India. The internet knows no boundaries. I invite anybody who has suggestions and complaints or questions to write to us. We value your opinion. gerdus@iafrica.com 2003 in Hindsight 2003 was a year of new things for us. We did our first show in the USA. It was a huge eye opener. To be there amongst the big boys. Such exposure to the market teaches us many things. I do think that marketing has changed over the years. One can now buy items from anywhere in the world by just sitting at the PC. It is no longer necessary to travel to far away places to sell your minerals. That is why I created a larger forum for selling. the Bid On Rocks website. www.bidonrocks .com It was a year of learning. I tried different things to try and get supply. I even hired someone to go up to Zambia and buy stock for me. This did not work. I lost a large sum of money in the process. I bought a vehicle for one of the miners and I financed his venture and lost some more money with this venture. I also made the mistake of concentrating on only one item and that being quartz. I neglected some of my suppliers and this has been detrimental to supply. I know that large things begin with small steps. You also need a strong foundation to build a large skyscraper. Some large skyscrapers have up to ten stories under the ground. A large tree has a well established root system that you never see. 2003 was a time of rooting for us. I increased my salesforce. My idea was to not depend on large one off happenings to make my turnover. I increased my shopspace at Hartbeespoortdam and unpacked the hundreds of boxes of stock to go into the shop. We still need more display units and these will be installed shortly. Our scratch patch will be open by April this year. We will have over 2000 lbs of tumbles in the scratchpatch when it is open. We have installed a huge pyramidal roof over the scratchpatch. Our shop at the dam will be the place to visit. Success start with a plan. He that fails to plan will plan to fail. Our foundational plans with the new store will start to bring in more revenue so that we can finance our mining ventures. There is a saying. If you want something done give it to the busiest guy. I sometimes feel like that guy. I spoke to a friend of mine this morning and she said that being a mineral dealer can be stressful. There are so many people to satisfy and we can often not get to it all done. All our plans are aimed at bringing in more revenue so that we can do more. Some people want to get wealthy by winning the lottery. Our long term plan is to grow through service and supply. The minerals in our country are far from the central area where we live so we have to travel to get to them Sometimes we have to cross two borders to bring you the goods that you see on the website. People often do not understand our quality requirements. We have found this out in 2003. I am now doing  landfill with all the rocks that I was given that did not meet with my approval. They will not be sold. I refuse to sell low quality items. When all else is gone it is only integrity that remains. 2004 will also be a year of establishing ourselves firmly.

Barium and Strontium Minerals Barite (barium sulfate) has an unusually high specific gravity (4.5) for a nonmetallic mineral; in fact, it gets its name from the Greek word meaning heavy. Well-formed crystals are frequently found with ore minerals in metalliferous veins and as fillings in cavities in limestones and other sedimentary rocks. The most highly prized specimens come from Cumberland and Westmoreland, England. When taken from the rock cavities, the crystals are usually brown but exposure to sunlight for a few months turns them a light blue. In places an intergrowth of tabular crystals forms rosettes that are known as barite roses. Barite is the principal source of barium for the chemical industry. But its chief use, amounting to over one million tons a year is as a weighting agent for the mud used in drilling oil wells. The inert barite with its high specific gravity greatly increases the weight of the mud, preventing oil and gas from being blown from the hole. Witherite (barium carbonate) is much less common than barite but occurs in similar associations. It is most commonly crystallized in pseudohexagonat twins, the finest specimens of these crystals coming from the now exhausted lead mines of Cumberland, England. Celestite (strontium sulfate) resembles barite so closely that it is impossible to distinguish them by inspection alone. They have similar crystal structures, with the position of faces, angles between them, and most physical properties nearly identical. Celestite gets its name from the fact that the first crystals described were a celestial blue, but it is commonly white or colorless. Celestite is usually found throughout limestones, sandstones and shales or in thin layers between them. The mineral mined from these bedded deposits is the principal ore of strontium. More rare, but of greater interest to the mineralogist, are well-formed crystals of celestite found lining cavities in sedimentary rocks. The world's most remarkable occurrence of celestite is on the island of Put-in-Bay in Lake Erie. A farmer discovered it in 1897 while drilling a well for water. At a depth of seventeen feet, his drilling bit suddenly dropped into an underground cavern. The driller assumed he had encountered a limestone cave similar to others on the island. To recover his drilling equipment he dug into the cave, and to his astonishment found himself in a grotto twenty-five feet long, fifteen feet wide, and twelve feet high completely lined with pale-blue crystals, some of them eighteen inches long. The crystals were celestite of a size and perfection not known anywhere else in the world. Soon after "Crystal Cave" was discovered, the owners decided to preserve it as a natural wonder. Only a small number of crystals have been removed and few museums have specimens. Aside from celestite, the only strontium mineral of commercial importance is the carbonate known as strontianite. Its occurrence is much more restricted and, as it commonly contains calcite and galena as impurities, its industrial uses are limited. Its crystals are usually needle-like and although generally white, may be yellow, green or gray. Strontianite occurs in veins in limestone along with barite, celestite and sulfide ore minerals. Much of the strontium recovered from celestite and strontianite is converted to compounds used in signaling flares. The element supplies "the rocket's red glare" and the red light of fireworks and highway warning flares. As strontium hydroxide it is important in the refining of beet sugar. Because of impurities in molasses, only about half of the sugar in it crystallizes; if the molasses syrup is mixed with strontium hydroxide, the remaining sugar can be recovered from the strontium saccharate which results

Freight cost from South Africa
Many people are confused about freight charges from Africa. Here is a quick guide to help you. Remember it is cheaper to freight when you buy larger parcels. It sometimes pay to get together with a few mates or to buy in larger quantities as a club. We do offer huge discounts for people who buy items in one tonnage lots. Let me give you a breakdown of the cost of shipping from small parcels to larger parcels and even larger parcels. You will then be able to compute what the best options are for your future shipping needs. This is based on an exchange rate of 6.8 against the US $. I will give you examples of the following weights. 500 grams  1 kg  10 kg  20 kg  50 kg  100 kg  500 kg  500 gram parcels and less is best send with normal airmail. The cost per kg is $ 17.05 plus a basic charge of $ 9.85 for every parcel. 500 grams would thus cost you $ 17.05 x .05 = $ 8.525 + $ 9.85 = $ 18.375 to send to you. This works out to $ 36.75 per kg. This is very expensive but it remains the cheapest and best way to send small expensive specimens to you.  1 kg parcels works on the same basis. That is 1 times 17.05 plus $ 9.85. This comes to $ 26.90 per kg.  10 kg parcels is a difficult weight to send. It is too heavy to send with the post at a cost effective price and it is too light to send by aircargo. By post we recommend that it is send with surface freight. The cost here is $ 3.85 per kg plus the basic charge of $ 9.85. This means that 10 kg will cost you $ 38.50 plus $ 9.85 for a total of $ 48.35. This means that it cost $ 4.83 per kg to send to anywhere in the USA. Other parts of the world have different charges.  The only disadvantage of this service is the time that it takes to get to you. It could  take up to 3 months. Another option to send a 10 kg parcel would be to send it by aircargo. It would cost you $ 139.70. This is a minumum charge that is valid up to 15 kg.  A 50 kg parcel by air would cost you approximately $ 268.38. This works out to $ 5.36 per kg.  A 100 kg parcel would also cost you $ 5.36 per kg. This comes to $ 536 per kg. Just remember that every kg that you add to the order cost you $ 5.36 per kg. If you buy a $ 3 per kg stone and pay $ 5.36 kg to get it to you it will cost you $ 8.36 per kg when landed. This can make inexpensive stones more expensive. Many customers still prefer to buy from us because of the superior quality that we sell. 500 kg is best send by sea. It cost approximately $ 400 for 1000 kg. This excludes the cost of the drums to pack it in. It might cost another $70 for the drums. The price remains the same for 500 or 1000 kg. It will thus cost you as little as 40 cents per kg to send stuff by sea if you take 1000 kg. If you only take 500 it will cost you 94 cents per kg. Waiting time :Up to two months. It gets send to your nearest Port. Many inland USA cities are recognized as Ports. I have attached a picture of the blue rough for you. This is the plancheite in the quartz. The cheap stuff.
UPDATES	Visit our updates page to see what we have been up to, we do a daily update when we are not out hunting down rocks. We try and do something to the site every day. www.mineralgallery.co.za/updates.htm Or visit our auction site where you are sure to get some of the best deals available anywhere. We have over 100 auctions running at the moment. www.bidonrocks .com or write to me at gerdus@mineralgallery.co.za Gerdus Brönn