Thunder Bay Amethyst Collecting

Large plate fresh out of the mine.

You can see how the colour changes from purple to white then back to purple and then finishes it off with a red top. 

This one weighted in just under 200 pounds.

The same 200 pound piece above, cleaned and displayed at the Spring Field Mineral Show 2015

This is a untouched pocket. I know its hard to tell the scale but its about 10ft long.

I have been collecting amethyst full time in Thunder Bay for the last six years and it has been incredibly fun. Two years ago my father and myself bought the old Pearl Lake Mine in Pearl, Ontario and opened up a tourist collecting operation. We renamed it the Bill's Old Mine because the owner at the time was an old prospector named Bill. The mine is unique for the area. It produces a lot of these mammoth size pieces of red amethyst. They weight anywhere from 70 pounds to 200 pounds. They also form in giant pockets like the one above. Most pockets in the other mines in the area are usually a few feet deep, well the pockets at Bill's Old Mine have been known to reach 20 to 30 feet deep. They are more like caves that pockets.