Supplemental Issues (Supplements/Supplemental Editions)

About our Supplements

The Mineralogical Record has a long history of providing its subscribers with free supplementary publications supported entirely by outside funding. The first of these were 32-page supplements on the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and the Houston Museum of Natural Science in 1990 and 1992 respectively. These were funded by the museums (including trips by the editor to personally select the minerals that would be shown). A supplement in the form of an exhibition catalog based on the Bisbee exhibition at the University of Arizona appeared in 2012. And in 2015 the University of Delaware supported a supplement featuring its own mineral museum, the legacy of Irenée du Pont. 

For collectors of mineralogy-related scientific instruments, the Mineralogical Record published a special issue on the crystallographic goniometer in 1998, followed by a 96-page supplement on the petrographic microscope in 2003. If assembled along with other instrumentation articles published over the years, these would comprise a remarkable book-length documentation of analytical mineralogical history. 

And speaking of history, a uniquely interesting, crowd-funded supplement from 2004 documents the 50-year history of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, describing the features and exhibits of every show, along with photos of many showcases and hundreds of people involved in the show and the hobby in those days. 

In 2007 came a ground-breaking supplement devoted to Ikons, Classics and Contemporary Masterpieces of Mineralogy, a 192-page primer for the building of an elite collection that immediately became a must-have reference for advanced mineral collectors everywhere. Extraordinary individual private collections likewise became the focus of supplements as well, beginning with the collections of Miguel Romero (Mexican minerals) and Marc Weill in 2008, then Desmond Sacco’s African minerals in 2014, Will Johnson’s exquisitely perfect crystals in 2023, and the aesthetically oriented collection of Jack Halpern in 2025. Other topical supplements have featured, at least in part, the collections of particular individuals; these include the supplement on the classic minerals of Northern England (based on Lindsay Greenbank’s collection, 2010), Thumbnail collecting (Alex Schauss collection, 2022), Scott Rudolph’s magnificent Tsumeb collection (2024), classic European minerals (Kay Robertson, 2025), and pseudomorph collecting (Stretch Young’s collection, 2025). A unique supplement featuring specimens from the Rob Lavinsky collection is devoted to the minerals of China (2013)—it also appeared later in a Chinese language edition. 

A large number of supplements have featured minerals from (mostly) private collections in particular geographical areas, wherein each collector has his or her own chapter. These include Texas (three supplements, in 2009, 2014 and 2020, totaling 772 pages!), Italy (2011), Arizona (in 2013 and 2020), San Francisco (2013), Colorado (2014), the American Midwest (2015), Austria (2015), the American Northeast (2016 – 460 pages!), California (2017), the Pacific Northwest (2019), and Australia (2020). A 2022 supplement (entitled Eureka!) is devoted strictly to private collections of self-collected specimens. 

Putting a capper on all of these many collecting specialties and modes is the collected column installments of the late mineral dealer Rock Currier, providing insightful advice on virtually every aspect of mineral collecting; he called it simply About Mineral Collecting (2009). 

Taken together, the 34 supplements published between 1990 and 2025 constitute nearly 6,000 pages of good reading, high-quality information and spectacular mineral photography, all provided free of charge to our subscribers.