Trinchillo, Daniel (1973- )

Daniel Joseph Trinchillo Jr. was born in Long Island, New York on July 23, 1973 to Camille (Natale) and Daniel Trinchillo Sr. The elder Daniel worked as a Production Manager for Edmund Mayer Meats, and later purchased a small trucking firm, Zole's Trucking Company, which he still operates today.

Daniel (Jr.) grew up in College Point, New York until the age of 12 when his family moved to Whitestone, New York. His interest in minerals and natural sciences began at the age of six or seven, when he would go into his neighbor's rock garden and select the oddest and strangest ones to take home. He then crushed them to powder with a hammer, collected the powder in test tubes and experimented on it with a chemistry kit he had received for his birthday. Every year his parents would take the family to the Orange County Fair in upstate New York, where his mother purchased for him a chunk of deep purple amethyst from Uruguay or Brazil. His elementary school took several class trips to the American Museum of Natural History and he was mesmerized by the Mineral Hall.

When Daniel was 13 his family took a road trip to New Jersey in search of crystals. They visited the "Jim's Gems" shop in Wayne, New Jersey, operated by Jim and Candice Kaufman. They were astounded to learn that mineral specimens like they had seen in displays at the American Museum could actually be purchased! That day Daniel's father bought nearly 200 specimens, beginning a family mineral collection that ultimately grew to over 4,000 specimens. Nearly every weekend thereafter, from the age of 14 through 18, Daniel traveled with his parents to some gem and mineral show or to see the collection of someone they had met at a show. They also field collected, traveling to localities such as Herkimer, New York to hunt for "Herkimer Diamonds," to the New Street quarry in New Jersey for zeolites, and even to the old Franklin mine, in New Jersey (where they had to sneak in).

Daniel's father purchased seven full-vision display cases for his mineral collection and lined the basement walls of their home with them. Daniel and his father spent the next ten years accumulating specimens. His father began to display his minerals in show exhibits all over the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area.

Daniel graduated from Bayside High School in Bayside, New York in 1991 and enrolled at Pace University in New York City. At that time a Russian named Rouslan Adamovsky visited Daniel's father and claimed that with some financial backing he could get great mineral specimens from Russia. They formed a company, DeTrin Fine Minerals, Inc., and Daniel and Rouslan subsequently flew to Russia over 70 times on successful buying trips in seven years. Their first show as dealers was the 1992 New Jersey Earth Science Show in Franklin. Finally, at age 21, Daniel ended his academic career just shy of obtaining his bachelor's degree and became a full-time mineral dealer.

Entrepreneurship was exploding in the new Russian economy in those days, and they began to establish new businesses of their own there, including supplying containers of chicken leg quarters, opening a fast food franchise, becoming a credit card provider, and establishing a taxi cab company, "Concord Unlimited," in Moscow. In 1993 DeTrin Minerals had their first selling room at the Tucson Show, at the Desert Inn. Daniel made the first of over 50 mineral buying trips to China in 1994, and in 1999 he left the taxi company to to concentrate on mineral dealing. He also traveled to Colombia for emeralds, then on to Pakistan, Tanzania and Brazil.

In 1999 Daniel and a German mineral dealer, Marcus Budil, became partners and collaborated in obtaining specimens in China, Colombia and throughout the world. In 2001, Daniel and Marcus purchased a home on Granada Avenue in downtown Tucson directly adjacent to Marty Zinn's Arizona Mineral and Fossil Show at the InnSuites. Every year since then, they have operated their own small show from the house, filling the ground-floor rooms with showcases offering fine mineral specimens. In 2002, Daniel and Marc Weill joined in a separate partnership to form Fine Minerals International and have successfully run the company together ever since.

Specimens from Daniel's collection were exhibited at the Tucson Show in 2001. In 2002, Daniel won the prestigious Desautel's Award for his competitive exhibit of specimens. His favorite locality is Dalnegorsk in Russia because of the affinity he has for Russia and the fond memories he has of his early years collecting and dealing there.

Daniel has owned and operated several mines around the globe. His mining project at the Pederneira mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil, has proven to be one of the most successful ventures in the world for producing fine tourmaline specimens.

Five years ago he met his wife, Marisa Chung, and they have two children.