Valuing Vanadinite

WITNESS TO MOROCCO’S MODERN MINING RUSH

- BOB FARRAR

Hmad demonstrates the only way down his well, dangling on the end of a rope from a hand-cranked winch

It’s what every crystal miner dreams of, that big pocket, the mother lode. The Brazilians have a word for it: bamburro. But such finds don’t only occur in Brazil.

As I recently learned, a new find of vanadinite in Morocco certainly qualifies as a bamburro, and it has resulted in a whole new mining rush.

I have had the opportunity to travel to Morocco several times in recent years and to visit some of the country’s many famous mineral and fossil localities. Regular readers of Rock & Gem may remember some of the articles that I have written describing some of these sites. Among these articles was one published in the May 2011 issue in which I related the story of a mining rush for vanadinite that had occurred in Morocco around the year 2000. That article was based on a visit that I made in 2008, after the rush when most of the miners had moved on. I found that visit interesting, but I was disappointed not to have been able to experience the rush in person. Well, it has happened again, and this time I got to see it.

This complexly crystalized specimen had no obvious point of attachment and was referred to as a “floater.”