Cisneros, Sharon (1941- )

Surely everyone in the mineral world must be familiar with Sharon Cisneros and her husband Gene, proprietors of the Mineralogical Research Company dealership in San Jose, California and a long-time presence at major mineral shows throughout the West. Her charming and ever-friendly manner, her passion for minerals (especially rare species and thumbnails), and her interest in the history of collecting have won her friends throughout the hobby. She purchased ads in the Mineralogical Record beginning with its second issue in 1970 (the first issue had hardly any ads), and in magazines like Gems & Minerals and Lapidary Journal beginning in the late 1950s when she was still just a teenager. Now retired, she has been kind enough to supply some autobiographical notes that form the basis of this article.

 Sharon Cisneros was born Sharon Lee Johns in San Jose, California, on May 29, 1941, the daughter of Beryl Dewolf [Brubaker] and Arthur Ardale Johns, a telephone lineman. She first developed an interest in minerals during one of her family’s annual summer backpacking trips (ca. 1950) to the Sonora Pass area in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Her father would rent a mule and load it up with their gear, then they (Sharon and her mother, father and sister) would start off hiking up a trail, often not encountering another person for the entire two-week outing. Sharon’s curiosity was piqued every time some different rock or mineral was encountered along the trail. Tiny quartz-crystal-filled geodes could be found in several places. On one occasion ca. 1948 they visited a scheelite mine, where their ultraviolet lamp reveal the stunning sight of a tunnel lit up with thousands of little pinpoints of blue-white light piercing the dark like stars. That mind-blowing experience hooked her on minerals! A visit to Yellowstone Park cemented a life-long interest in mineralogy and the earth sciences in general.

 When she was 15, Sharon met her future husband, 17-year-old Eugene Leon Cisneros. Since they shared a common interest in minerals and field collecting, and went on field trips together, exploring old abandoned pre-1900s mercury diggings in the Santa Clara Valley. Having no cash, they had to look for specimens they could sell for gas money.

 Their first commercial field-collecting success involved mining and marketing a lapidary material called orbicular jasper, also known as Morgan Hill poppy jasper. While Sharon was still in high school, she and Gene bought a second-hand 36-inch lapidary saw and made weekly, rigorous climbs up poison oak-covered Morgan Hill to collect the jasper. Then they backpacked it down the mountain, cut it into slabs and began advertising it for sale in Gems & Minerals and Lapidary Journal magazines. The jasper proved to be a highly desirable lapidary material not widely available from anyone else—thus they were in business together in 1958! Two years later they were married.

 By 1959, Sharon and Gene had both graduated from high school. Gene was working in a pharmacy while going to junior college, and Sharon was working as a bookkeeper. They were able to take weekend trips to southern San Benito County, California localities like Clear Creek, the New Idria mine and the Benitoite Gem mine. Looking for ways to supplement their income and build their fledgling mineral collection, they collected topazolite and melanite varieties of andradite as well as artinite, mercury-bearing minerals, chromite, and many others.

 After the birth of their two daughters they began selling minerals and lapidary materials again, and by 1964 they were attending some of the local shows as dealers. In the meantime, Gene was still working and going to school. By the time their daughters were old enough to climb a hill, they were back to doing field trips in San Benito County.

 In 1966, mentored by their friend, the well-known Oregon mineral dealer Walt Lidstrom (1920-1976), Sharon and Gene officially founded their mineral dealership, calling it the Mineralogical Research Company. Considering their interest in rare species and field exploration work, it was a well-chosen name. Encouraged by Walt, they embarked upon a 7,000-mile trip through Mexico to buy minerals, visiting several well-known localities in Chihuahua and Durango, and bringing back more than 100 flats of high-quality, in-demand specimens of wulfenite, mimetite, hemimorphite, yellow fluorapatite crystals (from Cerro de Mercado), and much more. 

By the time the second issue of the Mineralogical Record was published in 1970 they were advertising their business, “Mineralogical Research Company,” located at 1490 Mt. Shasta Drive in San Jose. Later that same year they moved into a home at 14770 Whipple Court, eventually adding on a spacious two-story mineral show room. They then began to buy mineral collections to supplement their show stock, and expanded their local show circuit to include annual sales at the Mineralogical Society of Southern California show in Pasadena and began to attend the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show as mineral dealers in 1975. They continued selling there every year until 2003, when they retired from the show to devote more time to their very active internet business. 

To supplement their show sales, they enlarged their mineral business by advertising in the popular gem and mineral magazines. The Mineralogical Research Company mail order business took off like a shot, and over a 50-year period evolved into a highly successful portion of their business. Mineral books, back issues of the Mineralogical Record, and meteorites were added to their list of specialties, then specimen boxes, stereographic microscopes, ultraviolet lamps, Geiger counters, and eventually digital microscopes and microscope eyepiece cameras. 

In 1977, they moved to 15840 East Alta Vista Way in San Jose, and have remained there ever since. During their early years, Sharon and Gene both maintained full-time jobs while also attending shows, running their mail order business, and raising a family. In 1974 they formally decided that Sharon should quit her full-time job as an executive secretary with a national marketing company and devote all of her energies to running their mineral business. 

While still attending to their California and Tucson show commitments, Sharon decided to travel to several shows on the East Coast to make personal contact with many of the mail order customers they had befriended over the years. She shipped their mineral show inventory to the Detroit, Rochester and Franklin shows and traveled by air to run the show booths while Gene stayed in California to continue working and attending his university classes. 

Sharon was the first woman speaker at the annual Rochester Academy of Sciences mineralogical symposium, presenting a one-hour illustrated lecture on the history of gold mining in California. 

In 1976 they opened a walk-in store in San Jose at 704 Charcot Avenue, specializing in minerals, meteorites and astronomical equipment. In 1981 they also made arrangements for a mineral dealer friend of theirs in Germany to sell minerals for them at the Munich show. The store in San Jose was open seven days a week, with six employees, leaving little time for field trips. They reluctantly closed the store in 1984, after eight years, because it was just too much work. Sharon continued to work at the business full time, while Gene was employed by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center National Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, designing nuclear instrumentation.

 After closing their store, field collecting trips became more frequent again, and between 1980 and 1992 they collected some exceptional artinite, andradite (large black melanite crystals and yellow topazolite), large natrolite crystals, and many other minerals. With diligent prospecting and determination, they successfully rediscovered the second reported occurrence of benitoite in San Benito County—the fabled occurrence of “pink benitoite.” They filed a mining claim on the occurrence, calling it Mina Numero Uno. One of the species they found at the site was ultimately named strontiojoaquinite (Wise, 1982) . 

Sharon and Gene made several spectacular discoveries of artinite at an occurrence near the headwaters of Clear Creek, recovering many hundreds of fine specimens, some of them world-class for the species. The find also gave Sharon an opportunity to write an article for the Mineralogical Record describing the minerals they found (Cisneros, 1977). Another major find they made was a deposit of melanite garnets, with crystals reaching an inch in size. Many specimens were recovered, the largest of which is now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. 

Sharon began to collect minerals in the early 1960s, mostly thumbnail-size specimens. After a few years she developed specializations in (1) minerals from Mexico, (2) classic European localities (especially in Germany and the United Kingdom), (3) African localities (including a sub-collection devoted to minerals from Tsumeb), and localities in (4) Australia, (5) Japan, (6) Russia, (7) Brazil, (8) China, and several others. Additional specialties include (9) single crystals, (10) fluorite from worldwide localities, (11) topaz, (12) quartz, (13) tourmaline group minerals, and several others.

She has enjoyed sharing her collections with the public via numerous special guest exhibits of thumbnail specimens at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show; at the Flandrau Planetarium’s year-long exhibit of minerals from Chinese localities in 2013; and in the 2013 “Crystal Gazers” supplement to the November-December issue of the Mineralogical Record. After collecting thumbnail specimens for more than 60 years, she remains very active, always looking for the chance to augment and improve the collection, now numbering over 3,000 specimens. Though thumbnail specimens remain her preferred size, Sharon never overlooks an opportunity to add to her smaller miniature collection. 

Just for a change of pace, Sharon took up the martial arts, specifically the Hawaiian Kempo style of karate, competing in tournaments as time allowed, advancing through several belt ranks, instructing students and occasionally breaking a brick for demonstrations. When that became too physically taxing she shifted to her second choice for a fun physical activity: weight lifting! 

In 2020 Sharon and Gene at last decided to retire from the business and take more time for themselves. They continue working on their bucket lists, going on field collecting trips to explore new localities and, hopefully, to make more new and interesting mineralogical finds.