June 2003 Newsletter
So what is new is what everybody asks? We as rockhounds are continually sniffing out the new and exciting. In South Africa I know of no new finds except for that which we mine ourselves. .  I travelled to Namibia on a two week journey and came back with specimens from the same sites that we have marketed before. I will give a brief account of my journey in an article further down. We have been concentrating on getting good quartz specimens for Denver. It seems likely that I will be exhibiting in Denver. We will exhibit a collection of quartz that should dazzle most people. Good colorful amethyst and hematoid quartz. Due to finding a lack of good local specimens we have decided to sell out some of our current A to B grade stock on my auction pages. Our first attempt in doing our own auctions on our website was very labor intensive. It also did not level the playing field. Our biggest problem came in when the auctions closed. Many of the bidders did not get what they wanted due to the manual nature of the auctions. We lost some of our buyers, others got fantastic deals. Well, we are back with an auction vengeance. I have installed new software that will be able to do everything we did previously by hand. Check it out at this page auction.mineralgallery.co.za It is similar to e-bay. We are now also able to accept auctions from you on the site. We hope our listing fees are market related. I have already received several thousand hits a day since we started. I can see that this mineral related auction site will become a great addition to a marketplace where everyone can sell their minerals. We will be selling wholesale lots as a 'buy it now' item on the auctions. There will be some very good deals available. We will also do slabs of colorful African rough. I will only list new specimens on the website if I think that they will enhance a mineral collection. Gerdus This month we cover the following The Opener. The first sentence on your website Series on minerals. Fluorite and luminescence My May 2003 trip to Namibia Lastly we have our regular Silver Hills Mineral Gallery link to our updates page and our auctions page. Be blessed as you read this newsletter. Gerdus

The Opening sentence on your website

Does your Opening Page start like this?... "Welcome to My Site!" If it does, it's bye-bye to your visitor Your customer does not care about you or your company until he understands what you can do for him. He hits your site, moving at 100 MPH, with one question... "What's in it for me?" Remember that trigger-happy index finger? Your prospect is time-pressured and looking for any reason to leave you. He concentrates the most on your opening headline and sentence. Make an impact right off the top, while he is curious and interested. At this moment, your target is squarely in your sights -- fire your biggest attraction guns right away (tempered with credibility). Aim straight for the heart of your cyber-target. Bring him to a screeching halt. Make him say, "Whoops! This looks worthwhile. Tell me more!" Here's how... Fire Your Biggest Gun First Pull out ..your heavy artillery -- the major benefit to the customer. Fire it immediately, in the first headline and sentence of your Opening page Let's assume "Joe Prospect" is hitting your site right now. He is thinking "What's in it for me?" So... Match your opening message to Joe's strongest motivator, either "pain" or "gain"... 1) Pain  most people feel deprived in either wealth, health, love, or happiness. Show people how your product will make a difference. Make it clear that you understand your visitor's problem and that you have the cure for his pain or fear of loss. 2) Gain -- stress the most important positive benefit that your product can offer, in language that your customer will appreciate. The Opening Page for each product must start by stressing benefits, benefits, benefits. Let Joe know how his life will be better because of your product. Many sites start off like this... "The XYZ hightech company is a leader in nano-technological innovation since yesterday... blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah... us, we, ours, our founding fathers..." These are the same people who can't figure out why Joe doesn't buy! After all... Who are you most likely to buy from? The pizza shop that leads off with... "Hot Pizza in 30 Minutes Or Less... Guaranteed." OR "Luigi's Pizza Parlor has been making great pizzas for 30 years.  we started in Ippawich, Pennsylvania in a little restaurant... blah, blah, blah..." Bottom line. Boil your product down into a short, sharp benefit-laden punch that your customer can't ignore. Open with that. Whether you use "pain" or "gain" will depend on the nature of your particular product and target market. But, whichever approach you choose, make it tighter and tighter, sharper and sharper. Hone it until it's razor-sharp... until it's irresistible! If your opening headline and sentence answers "What's in it for me?," you'll convert the "I'll just take a quick look" arrival into a motivated visitor. Which means that you're halfway to getting the most wanted response from your visitor. But...lf your Opening Page makes him ask... "Who cares? So what?"... he's gone And just what is your biggest gun? Easy, it's your Unique Selling Proposition Your Unique Selling Proposition  is your product's most powerful benefit, combined with a strong, unique aspect of your business, It answers that most difficult question... Why should potential customers buy your product, from your company? More about this next month!

Fluorite and Luminescence Fluorite, calcium fluoride( Fluorspar) , is found in many geological environments. It is deposited in veins with metallic ore minerals, especially those of lead and silver; it may be an accessory mineral in igneous rocks and pegmatites; it is found with barite, gypsum, celestite and dolomite, or it may occur in veins with no other mineral. But some of the largest and best-formed crystals of fluorite are found extending into cavities formed by solution in limestone rocks. Fluorite has many interesting properties and uses. Crystal habit It crystallizes in cubes that are sometimes intergrown to form twinned crystals. Many of the finest crystals have come from the lead mines of Cumberland and Derbyshire, England. The miners there early learned that the most desirable specimens were not only well-crystallized but exhibited unusual crystal faces. To accommodate the purchasers, the miners frequently supplemented the common faces by others carefully filed and polished. Fluorite has perfect octahedral cleavage; that is, there are four directions of easy breaking. Thus, with patience, one can cleave a perfect eight-sided octahedron from a fluorite cube. Color When pure, fluorite is transparent and colorless, but it is rare in this state. A variety of impurities and structural imperfection give rise to different colors. Crystals may be green, yellow or purple or, more rarely, blue, pink and brown. Luminescence The impurities, coupled with imperfections in the crystal structure, cause fluorite to be remarkably luminescent. Luminescence, the property of some minerals to emit visible light other than by incandescence, can be created in different ways. Thus, triboluminescence is caused by crushing or scratching, thermoluminescence by heating, and fluorescence by exposure to radiation of short wave length. All of these types of luminescence are generally exhibited in fluorite but it is impossible to predict which specimens will luminesce. The only way to find out is to try, but the trial should be made in the dark, since sometimes the light is extremely feeble. In a mine with the light extinguished, triboluminescence will cause a glowing trail to remain for many seconds after a rock face of fluorite has been scratched by a prospector's pick. If a small piece of fluorite heated slowly in a test tube begins to glow before the mineral reaches the temperature of red heat, it is thermoluminescent. The color of the light emitted differs from specimen to specimen and may be yellow, green, blue or violet. Fluorescence Fluorescence, which derives its name from fluorite and is the most familiar type of luminescence, is produced by exposing the mineral to ultra-violet light. Many minerals have this property and well-chosen specimens produce a spectacular exhibit. Even ordinarily dull minerals suddenly come to life and give off brilliant colors Occurrences Fluorite occurs in thousands of areas, in some only as scattered grains, in others as deposits of thousands of tons. The few places where it has grown out into an open space furnish the most spectacular specimens. These are usually well-faced crystals but an interesting type, found at Derbyshire, England, is a fibrous and banded blue variety called CCBlue John." This material was known to the Romans, who used it for carving cups, bowls and vases, and ever since then it has been used for ornamental objects. Because of its fibrous nature, Blue John is not as fragile as single crystals and thus easier to work, but single crystals have been carved; in fact, the Chinese, using the green variety resembling jade in color, have made exquisite statuettes and images out of it. Some extraordinary carvings in fluorite, produced by the American Indians, have been excavated in the Angle Mounds in southwestern Indiana. The most beautifully crystallized fluorite has been found in England, where it occurs in perfectly formed, blue and violet cubic crystals, sometimes encrusted with small quartz crystals. The best-known of the many areas in which fluorite has been mined in the United States are at Rosiclare in southern Illinois and adjacent parts of Kentucky. At famous Cave-in-Rock, a few miles up the Ohio River from Rosiclare, where the fluorite lines and partially fills limestone caverns, it occurs in a variety of colors and has been deposited in well-formed cubes, some as large as a foot on one edge. As the most common mineral containing fluorine, fluorite (CaF2) is an important raw material for the chemical industry. Uses It is used commercially, under the name fluospar, in the preparation of hydrofluoric acid essential in the manufacture of synthetic cryolite used as an electrolyte in recovery of aluminum metal. It is also the source of fluorine for organic fluorides used as refrigerants and inert fluorocarbon resins used for pipe and tank linings. One such product used for lining cooking utensils goes under the trade name Teflon. The largest amount of fluorite is used by the steel industry as a flux in open-hearth furnaces to produce a fluid slag which cleanses the steel of phosphorus and sulfur. A small but important use is as lenses in special optical equipment. For this purpose, fluorite must be clear, colorless and quite free of impurities. But synthetically grown crystals are now increasingly used to satisfy the demand for high-quality optical material.

Namibia May 2003  Two of my friends from the USA visited me. My promise to them was that I will show them Namibia. We left Hartbeespoortdam early in the morning and arrived in Windhoek by late evening. It is a long strenuous drive through Botswana. In Windhoek I saw Andreas Palfi who sold me some Aris quarry specimens, see makatite, villuamite and tuperssuatsiaite. Rare minerals. The next morning we were off to the North west side of Namibia. Later the day we landed up in Karibib. Here my friends bought loads of tourmaline. The price was high at first and then we discovered that most of the tourmaline were low quality. After negotiations the price came down. The next day we made a return visit to the tourmaline site (more of the same) after that we set off for Swakopmund. En route we stopped at the Henties Bay turn-off. Here we bought many specimens. Prices are a bit high at this venue. I was nearly caught with some manufactured aquamarine. They glue a good crystal of aquamarine on some matrix. The golden rule is. "If it looks to good to be true you might be caught" Swakopmund is a holiday town. Very German. The Kristal Gallery is a definite visit. The largest quartz cluster in the world is on display here. The next day found us on the way to Uis where we struck camp. Early the next day we were off to the Brandberg and the Gobobobes mountains. We were fortunate to get a very good batch of enhydro quartz here. See my quartz page. www.mineralgallery.co.za/quartz.htm Brandberg quartz is expensive. A single crystal can cost you anything from $ 10 upwards at the mine. Demand has established prices. Our next stop was the Okorusu fluorite mine. This visit was a disappointment. The mine has no idea what the market value of their specimens are. Most of the specimens, if you can call the damaged smashed up pieces specimens, are totally overpriced. We were told that there has not been buyers for some time. I now know why. I was fortunate to get a flat of fluorites that was undamaged. The price on my website reflects the price that I paid. I sell minerals because I love it, but I also sell minerals to pay the bills. Okorusu fluorite will not pay my bills. We did enjoy the opportunity to tour the mine and see the actual pockets. I guess we keep on buying from the people who make us the most profit. I hope that my reputation keeps on growing as the one source where specimens and rough can be sourced at a reasonable price. After getting our paperwork to get through the border, we head down south. We saw a farmer on the way and debated opening a quartz mine on his farm. The cost versus the quality will determine our final decision. At the border we encountered the usual bureaucracy. Open up, let me see what you are hiding. They thought that fluorite was quartz and then they waved us through. On the South African side we visited all my small quartz mine sites. These are my projects. We currently have several teams in the bush mining colorful quartz. Our initial investment was high. We invested in equipment and a vehicle for the miners. Now after months we are starting to reap the results of our investment. Our plan is still to go to Denver but I will definitely be at Tucson next year. I have just bought a new slabsaw and some very exciting rough. Expect to see some slices up for grabs on my auction page soon. Gerdus
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. www.mineralgallery.co.za/updates.htm Or visit our auction site where you are sure to get some of the best deals available anywhere. auction.mineralgallery.co.za or write to me at gerdus@mineralgallery.co.za Gerdus Brönn