ABOUT
Chinese mineral specimens are widely known among collectors for two main reasons – the sheer volume of specimens that originate in the country, and secondly, their near endless variety. It seems that nearly every year at least one new find of minerals is made in China. The small, little mechanized nature of the mines and quarries there makes recovery of specimens extremely profitable for both the miners and the mining companies.
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The majority of China is resource-rich, although this varies with location. China is known widely for its production of fluorspar, copper, rare earth elements, coal, antimony, zinc, lead, iron, tin, tungsten, and others. China is the largest producer of fluorspar and rare earth elements in the world and has numerous mines to exploit both. Unfortunately, only mines of fluorspar produce specimens of interest to most collectors. The minerals produced at the rare earth mines around the city of Baotou in Inner Mongolia are not terribly flashy.
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Many mineral collectors complain about Chinese mineral specimens for various silly reasons. Popular ones seem to be “the specimens are just too common”, “they are not valuable enough”, and “too many of them are fake.” My answer to all of those statements is “just look at the specimens.” China offers some of the finest examples in the world of many species and while Chinese specimens are initially very abundant from many localities, these sites eventually produce less and less just like mines anywhere else.
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