On our most recent trip to the Keweenaw I successfully found some wonderful gemstone rough material to work into new jewelry pieces. When I say I “found” great gemstone rough: I mean I found several friends who were willing, for cash, to part with some wonderful local minerals! Rare colored Datolite is drawing a premium price, even in the rough.

The annual Ishpeming Show is always interesting, and most of the time if you look in the crevices of this show, good, and sometimes great treasures, can be found. Being an experienced, senior rockhound sometimes has its advantages at times. Being around the block with some of the old, now extinct, gemstone materials has advantages over younger rockhounds. I often recognize old material from back 30 years or more that is seldom seen. This happened at the Ishpeming show.

I saw some Iron Lace Agates from the Republic mine that were briefly available… I’m betting that not many know what these agates really were, and the history of them. A seam of Iron Lace Agate (named by the Ishpeming Rock Club) was very briefly mined back in the 70’s from the North wall of the New Republic Mine near Marquette. I purchased a few and will make jewelry for the Agate Expo next year.

The other wonderful things I sought out with success was some caramel yellow Mesnard Datolite, a piece of impossibly rare, canary yellow, Keweenaw Point Datolite, some wonderful, Copper included, Delaware Datolite, some classic Yellow Quincy Datolite, a slightly different yellow than the Yellow Point datolite. It’s always a good day when I find some rare Centenniel Blue Datolite. Blue Centennial Datolite is now very hard to find. I also found several spectacular Lakers to work with.

The Isle Royale Copper Mine had some of the hardest Datolite of a light green color, and also some Blue Datolite, much of it a softer, requiring some stabilization in order to work with it for jewelry.

I just started working with all my new rocks, so you will see jewelry soon.