More emeralds found by one of the club members.

Great pics from the dig.  Love the matrix shot with scale.

Great little video, Scott. The link doesn't work but it's easy
enough to find in the Video section.

I guess I will go ahead and post my pics of the dig here.
We may want to start another thread for specimen pics
when they are ready. Who knows?

This was a very Historic dig. It was the first time in about
40 years that this locality has been opened to the general
public to collect, and of course, the owner, Jamie Hill, chose
the best rock club in the world to start it off, MAGMA.

This mine was first known as the Rist Mine and was
sometimes open to collectors back in the 60's, 70's, and
into the 1980's. It is now known as the North American
Emerald Mine and Jamie Hill has been working it, and finding
the best emeralds from anywhere in North America for about
the last forty years. He has also started an aggregate
business at the quarry called the Alexander Quarry.

I really never dreamed of the opportunity to access this
famous quarry site and wasn't the only one excited about it.
These first two pics are of the Sign-In line Friday morning,
March 23, 2012. These are the only pics I managed to take
on that first day as the rest of the day was spent frantically
searching the entire 7 acres. 190 people showed up for Friday.

Directly across from the area of activity is a Mid-Level in
the mine and then it drops down to bottom level.
Great specimens were and are found on ALL levels, but the
little island in the back corner of the bottom level was
another area of much activity.

A quick pan of the quarry from the back bottom of it and
some pics of the nice Gneiss that makes up most of the
host rock.

Which brings us back to where Scott started this thread
from, The Dream Team.
Terry and John from Florida hitting the motherlode of emeralds.
It was truly fantastic that SOMEONE found a pocket of what
most thought was going to be impossible, EMERALDS!
The MAGMA club dug again the following Saturday and five
more emeralds were found.
I managed to bring home a lot of green mica, alot of it with
rutile, , but I saw absolutely incredible specimens being
found everywhere all weekend.
I hope to get back to this famous locality as often as possible.
Joe

Joe great pics of the site and activity. Love the island pics and the sweep of the quarry.  Just finished studying my specimens that you shared with me in Raleigh.  Very interesting stuff, can't wait to get them under the microscope.

Thanks for the pics...very interesting. Since this is just down the road from my house, I am going to have to consider a trip.