About me

My first contact with beautiful minerals was pretty late, I was 20 years old. On a family-trip to Norway I visted the well known Evje pegmatite district where there were a few quarries that were open for amateur mineral exploration.

After some digging I became captivated by the variety and quality of minerals that could be found with a simple hammer and chisel – I was hooked! That very day I found some very nice pyrite-crystals, amazonite and even fluorite. These specimens were not very valuable, but sentimentally are priceless and still form part of my collection today.
During the next few years I was mainly interested in the minerals from Saxony/Germany, the county I used to live in. The long history of mining and the huge number of mines and dumps made it easy to practice this newly acquired hobby.

In 2004 I moved to Austria which also accompanied a redirection in my mineral collection. The focus moved from Saxony more southward to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and of course, Austria.
Today I’m married with two beautiful kids, who are also interested in collecting minerals :). However, due to limited time that comes with maturity and adulthood, I am not able to go on field trips very often. But I still remember some great past trips, especially the Freiberg district in Germany, Krupka and Medenec in Czech Republic or the Weisseck mountain in Austria.

My collection contains mainly minerals from Saxony, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. But I’m not totally rigid on those collecting parameters, sometimes I can’t resit buying interesting specimens from all over the world, especially pseudomorphs!