Garske, David H. (1937- )

David H._____ Garske was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan on March 2, 1937, the son of Herman Edward Garske (a machinist for Fuller Manufacturing and Upjohn in Kalamazoo, Michigan) and Frona Odell (she set up and ran the first hot lunch program for schools in southwestern Michigan). Dave grew up in Portage, Michigan.and attended schools there, graduating in 1955. He had already become interested in minerals through a high school science class. Following his interest, he went on to earn his B.S. in geological engineering from Michigan Tech in 1959, an M.S. in mineralogy from the University of Michigan in1961, and a Ph.D. in mineralogy/crystallography from the University of Michigan in 1970 (he left college in 1965 to take a job, and finally finished his dissertation and took his final exams in 1970).

Dave taught mineralogy, crystallography, petrography, petrology, economic geology and other courses at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology from 1965 to 1976, and was curator of mineralogy in the museum there from 1965 to 1972. He married Susan Roberts (daughter of the well-known South Dakota mineralogist Willard L. "Bill" Roberts) in 1967, and in the 1970's she often helped him collect specimens to sell. They have one son Brian Craig Garske. The first big collection he purchased was that of D.D. Porter of Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1965.

Dave has collected in the copper district of Michigan, the limestone quarries in souhwestern Michigan and northwestern Ohio, and the pegmatite deposits in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He became a part-time mail-order-only mineral dealer in 1970, while living in Rapid City, South Dakota, because his meager salary at the School of Mines was not enough to cover his living expenses. He became a full-time dealer in 1976, when he quit teaching and moved to Elmhurst, Illinois in order to pick up a large mineral collection—he had just become divorced, and it was easier to move himself, he says, than it would have been to move that collection! There his sold by mail as before, and also opened a retail store. At his peak he was was issuing a 20-page catalog weekly, sending them to no more than a hundred customers at a time to avoid duplicate orders.

In the summer of 1979 he moverd to Bisbee, Arizona, where he maintaned a shop at various addresses including O.K. Street, (two locations), Main Street, Brewery Avenue (three locations), Subway Street and Brophy drive. His last Bisbee location was at 24 Brewery Avenue, where he maintained a retail store for about 10 years (1996-2006); those labels carry the company name "Minerals and More." Besides general specimens he has specialized in fluorescent minerals, rare species, calcite, barite, fluorite, quartz, and Michigan minerals. He also designed and manufactured boxed mineral collections which he sold nationwide for 20 years, until 2006. While at his last location on Brewery Avenue he changed his label colors every six months for inventory control. If a specimen didn't sell in a year, he would cut the price by a third every six months until it sold. He now includes the month and year that he sold the specimen on the label, believing that the label should give as much information as possible. His labels include his e-Bay inventory number, the major mineral present, any accessory minerals (sometimes the rock matrix name), locality with as much information as he has, and prior specimen history, starting with the original collector if possible (unless the collector wants to remain anonymous). He has also changed the color of his e-Bay labels yearly. Collecting a complete set of his labels, he says, is like collecting stamps from Great Britain—many varieties and lots of errors!

Dave recently gave up his Bisbee quarters and moved to Tucson in December of 2006; he currently lives at 828 East 7th Street, and is no longer equipped for walk-in sales. Since 2001 he has sold on e-Bay, and is now a full-time e-Bay dealer. He can be contacted at rockdoc@theriver.com, home/business-(520) 495-4383, cell-(520) 266-2006.