Top products from r/Minerals

These are really good - both the minerals and your photos.


I encourage you or your dad to pick up a copy of an illustrated mineral guide if you find yourself in the least bit curious about the specimens. I know mineralogy gets all technical with the crystal chemistry and thin sections and stuff, but it doesn't have to be. I'm thinking of something like this, with multiple high quality photos for each mineral entry (your own photos are a similar standard!) and a couple of paragraphs about the formation or common uses for each. I got into minerals due to the wow factor of all the pretty specimens and a guide like that made me take up a geology degree :)

Here's a comment with some stand recommendations that I gave to someone else.

Here's some links for specific stands that I recommend. They should be versatile and are budget friendly.

U-Stands. Great for highlighting pieces in the back of displays and adding accents, sometimes can be rotated to create a two level effect.

Easel Stands. Good for displaying slabs or even books.

Sliding Stands. Good for vertical pieces, and can hold much more than you would think. Really wide pieces can start adding too much weight, so don't push them too far.

Peg Stands. Subtle and easy to incorporate into any display. 1 2 3

Slotted Acrylic Stands. Meant to hold labels so they're easy to see for pieces in the back or on higher shelves.

This is all really for cabinet sized pieces, but I don't really know what you have so this may or may not work.

I know exactly what you need. This is what I use and sell 2 or 3 of these as my rock and mineral shop every month. It is 220x magnification and hooks up via HDMI cord to a tv or laptop. The best part IMHO is that if you get a sd card it also takes pictures and videos! In my shop we have it hooked up to a big tv and customers can play with it, it never fails to amaze!

(You can see some of the microscope pics I've taken at World_of_rocks_ypsi on instagram)

*edit Forgot to mention it's only like $140 soooooo 👍
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T5UBJHO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_2vtHybHAX87RF

If you just want a reference for IDing rocks in the field. This is a pretty good book for that.

If you actually want to learn about how minerals form/chemistry and structure. This textbook is a good one, but I may be biased because Dexter was my mineralogy instructor.

And I'd like to add in my favorite, the Caliper display stand. A bit pricy, but can really make those small pieces "pop"!

I've also got a few sawn-down pieces of wood to to lend a bit of height to small specimens that otherwise might get lost amongst the larger ones.