LEGO Minecraft Mineral Display

A tour of my bookshelf will show two predominant subjects: LEGO (obviously) and minerals. Ever since Earth Science in junior high I’ve been fascinated by minerals. I occasionally purchase minerals for my collection. Most people store fine china or antique knick-knacks in their china hutch, but in my china hutch minerals are on the top shelf. The LEGO theme of Minecraft and my mineral collection have been begging for combination. So here we go. In the photo above is pyrite (iron sulfide) in a marl groundmass. I prefer minerals to be in the rock matrix they were found in—the less human manipulation (cutting, polishing, etc), the better. Pyrite continues on in the photo below of a ammonite fossil, whose structure has been largely replaced with pyrite. This pyritization sometimes occurs under specific geochemical conditions. One more example at the bottom of the page is of schorl, a black variety of tourmaline (sodium iron aluminum boro-silicate). The schorl display shows a benefit of using LEGO to hold minerals in that bricks can be strategically placed to prop up irregularly shaped minerals for the best view.