Owned and photographed by John Frazier. 
Garnets in muscovite.

Quartz, Banner Elk, Avery Coiunty, NC.  Collected by Bob Durr, circa 1989.

Great specimens from an obscure location. I visited the Henson Creek Mine back around 2001 or 2002 and only found two small broken chips of blue beryl. It was an odd place as you could see the hanging wall but the fill was right on top and was near the consistency of beach sand, very very eroded and weathered kaolin/feldspar. It was rumored that the Beryl zone was about 15' below the dumps.

Thanks for sharing!

-Dave

Well done, Dennis! Nice finds!
I like the beryl poking out of the mica best!

Dave, Joe, Scott: Thanks for the comments and added info.  Scott, the garnet's from the Henson Creek Mine, too.  I forgot to change the second sentence in my post above to reflect that.

Here's some information that I was about to locate about the Vance Black Mine which is located northwest of Spear, NC:

The Vance Black Mine produced rum mica (muscovite) as reported in: Olson, J.C. 1944. Economic Geology of the Spruce Pine Pegmatite District, North Carolina. N.C. Geological Survey Bulletin. Raleigh , N.C. 67 pp.  The mine became the Henson Creek Aquamarine Mine 1/1/1950, with Elbert D. Watson (Rt. 3, Newland, NC 28657) the controller and the primary product gemstones; the current status date (3/17/1979) indicated that the mine was abandoned, was an underground mine with a single pit (www.mines.findthedata.com/I/455631).  The Henson Creek Aquamarine Mine was purchased by the late Gary D. Ledford (Hwy 226 S., Spruce Pine, NC 28777) and registered 5/16/1991, Control #: 0287692 (www.northcarolinacorps.com/corp/873128.html). Gary and Terry Ledford mined beryl (aquamarine and some golden beryl) and garnets for several years.  According to Ryan Ledford, Terry’s son, the mine is still owned by the Ledfords (Ryan Ledford, pers. comm., July 2015).  It has been closed to collectors for several years.

Also, this mine is the only location for beryl in Avery Co.  Mindat.org lists the Black Mine for beryl, but this mine is located east of Plumtree, NC.  This is most likely an error due to similarity in the mine's name.  This type of error has happened a lot because many mines in the Spruce Pine mining district have mine names with identical last names (examples: Wiseman Aquamarine Mine [Estatoe] vs. Wiseman Mine [2.5 miles NE Spruce Pine]).  It gets very confusing sometimes.

Peace,

Dennis