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 Post subject: Amethyst mining in Virginia
PostPosted: Sat Aug 01, 2015 10:15 pm 
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Did a week long dig at the Scufflin acres mine up in Virginia with a few friends...dug pretty deep with a 30,000 pound trackhoe. Hit lots of amethyst, some crystals with white calcite rhombs inside them(looks like confetti), some very rare "cumberland habit" quartz(amethyst).
I did a quick video of Bryan pulling out some good crystals....enjoy :D

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 Post subject: Re: Amethyst mining in Virginia
PostPosted: Sat Aug 01, 2015 11:51 pm 
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Well done! =D> =D> =D>


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 Post subject: Re: Amethyst mining in Virginia
PostPosted: Sun Aug 02, 2015 6:42 pm 
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Location: The frozen north prairie :-/
I'm curious—is this digging done on public land or is it private property? If public, are you allowed to just take in a trackhoe or do you need permission and a permit?


By the way—Bryan's kind of a cutie :wink: .

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 Post subject: Re: Amethyst mining in Virginia
PostPosted: Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:18 pm 
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That location is on private land. The lady is older and loves the rocks she has on her land. She also enjoy's the attention she is getting from the different folks passing through wanting to dig on her land. Pretty much everything out on the East Coast will be on private land. No BLM out here. Hey Modo :D

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 Post subject: Re: Amethyst mining in Virginia
PostPosted: Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:30 pm 
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Here is a fairly nice specimen from the dig. This was one of Bryan's picks from the split. It's got a fantastic amethystine overgrowth with whitish quartz crystal phantoms underneath. The purple has a strong red secondary.....on top of all that check out the rare habit those crystals are displaying in the picture. They are all dipyramidial shaped quartz crystals. They have very little to no m-face(the big prism face usually) on the crystals. Fantastic!


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amethyst specimen from Virginia.jpg
amethyst specimen from Virginia.jpg [ 202.56 KiB | Viewed 3542 times ]

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 Post subject: Re: Amethyst mining in Virginia
PostPosted: Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:21 am 
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Here is a crystal from the dig that I backlit to help show how saturated this stuff is. It reminds me of some material I had from Pennsylvania a good while back. So dark they tend to look black.


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virginia ammy crystal.jpg
virginia ammy crystal.jpg [ 59.77 KiB | Viewed 3445 times ]

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