Dr. Rob Woodside Collection Auction!

We are proud to present a selection of minerals, both old classic, and contemporary, from the collection of Rob Woodside. This auction emphasizes Chinese classics and Afghani specimens. Dr. Rob Woodside is a lifelong collector residing in Vancouver, who has built and sold several important systematic Native Element and Sulfide collections to the Royal Ontario Museum. He kept for himself in retirement from the Fraser Valley University, a worldwide collection of mixed minerals and a collection of Afghani minerals from the historic Lapis deposit in Sar E Sang. Rob literally wrote the article on Sar E Sang and the weird and complicated group of sodalite-hauyne-related minerals from there, analyzing all; and any such samples here are from his study collection put together during decades of this material coming out at its peak diversity in the mid-2000s. His article is the subject of the 2014 special issue of Mineralogical Record - Famous mineral localities: The Sar-e-Sang lapis mines, Kuran Wa Munjan district, Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan. Many of these specimens were purchased for that article and the research involved, with some pieces valued $5000-10,000.