Notice the large sphere to the bottom left in this collection of beautiful Graves Mountain specimens. Amazingly enough, the Tellus staff chose a picture for the background of this display that was taken from the same era when I collected the boulder the sphere was cut from. If you look to the right of the large center specimen, there is a hole in the quarry floor in front of the beautiful red acid lake. That is where the boulder was collected on a Baptist church explorer group trip back in 1996. It took two hours to dig out and dislodge the boulder and the rest of the day with a 20# sledge to break it down into pieces small enough to be lifted out of the hole. The largest and best of these chunks were sent to China to be cut into the sphere and the rest is history.

Beautiful Romanian Dolomite on Quartz

Huge recent gold find from Cherokee County, GA. I researched and found this location several years before but was not lucky enough to have a metal detector with me at the time.