Catalog Search Guide

You can search our catalog using different mineral attributes. For example, you can search by color such as green, yellow or purple, or by chemical elements such as uranium, calcium or iron, or by mineral groups such as phosphate, silicate or carbonate. You can also filter by crystal habit like crystal, geode or crystal on matrix, by specimen size such as thumbnail, small, medium or cabinet, and by features such as radioactive or fluorescent minerals.

Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world's most prolific mineral-producing countries, celebrated above all for the copper-cobalt deposits of the Katanga Copper Crescent in the southeast. Mining centres such as Kolwezi, Likasi, Kambove, and Kamoto have yielded extraordinary specimens of malachite, azurite, heterogenite, and cobaltoan calcite, prized worldwide for their saturated colour and crystal habit.

Few localities rival the historic Shinkolobwe Mine, source of uranium for the Manhattan Project and type locality for dozens of rare secondary uranium species including becquerelite, studtite, kasolite, and sklodowskite — a mecca for micromineral and radioactive-mineral collectors. Nearby, the Kipushi Mine is renowned for its unusual zinc-copper-germanium sulfide suite, having produced the type material for renierite, briartite, and germanite, alongside fine dolomite and aurichalcite. Further afield, the pegmatites of Kobokobo in Kivu province have furnished a remarkable series of new uranium phosphate species, while Manono is famous for tin and its giant spodumene pegmatite, and the alluvial fields of Mbuji-Mayi and Tshikapa supply Kasai's diamonds.

Collectors seek Congolese specimens for their combination of scientific importance and visual beauty: dense, gemmy malachite, sharp cobaltoan calcite crystals, and rare uranium and germanium minerals unknown or scarce elsewhere. Decades of study by Belgian mineralogists have made this region a cornerstone of systematic mineralogy, and material from Katanga remains among the most sought-after in any serious specimen collection.