Massive Site Update Part 1 – German, Turkish and Russian Thundereggs

Thundereggs have been accumulating lately – and I have been sitting here miserably lazy!  However, I have finally started a massive update and many new stones are now on-line.  The first part of this update covers the old world and there are well over 100 new stones that have passed through my hands and a few that have stayed there!

Most exciting perhaps is a new location from Russia, tagged simply as the Ural Mountains.   I have very little info beyond that but the stone is a lovely little thing with waterline agate.  Almost ‘scenic’ of the grey Russian seas and distant Arctic ice . . .

Ural Mountains Thunderegg

Turkey has also yielded a new bed – one of the many tagged as simply Cubuk.  This is a very different stone to anything I have seen before, with a beautiful mottled matrix.  It’s a smaller stone than many from here.

Cubuk Area Thunderegg

However, Germany is the main area for updates.  Here are a few of the best ones.  Several new Spießberg stones are on-line, including this little beauty.  I sold this one and I am now thinking I must have been insane to part with it.  It has some of the best fortification agate I have ever seen from here and also note that strange horizontal line in the agate, which appears to be a very fine band of clear agate within the white.

Spießberg Thunderegg

Here also is a nice Mönchstal geode.  The other half has been on the site for a while but now finally the pair are united.  The colours are somewhat paler and subtler than usual from this location.

Mönchstal Thunderegg

A Hohenstein Ernstthal thunderegg next.  This is a location that has long frustrated me since most I have seen seem to suffer horrible from cracks and damage.  This one though is a pretty nice one with a wonderfully colourful red and green core.

Hohenstein Ernstthal Thunderegg

Not surprisingly it is Nesselhof and Lierbachtal – possibly my two favourite locations (which I have been polishing and selling a lot lately) that are featured most.  Both these galleries are now massive, showcasing these very varied stones.

Lierbachtal Thunderegg Geode

The above is a fantastic showcase of how complex these stones can be.  There are so many details in this stone that it is hard to know where to start!

Lierbachtal Thunderegg

And this is a very small specimen with a simple but curious core.  I am not sure really what is going on in here, save for the sagenite needles.

Moving on to Nesselhof, here is a selection of new stones:

Classic Nesselhof Thunderegg Pair

Nesselhof thunderegg with an unusually well defined core

Nesselhof Thunderegg Pink Agate

This one been in the wars! Battered and fragile to begin with, broken on digging, then shattered again in the post to me. I had to salvage it as best I can. The result is rather sad – like a crippled pet. That agate though is something else, especially in closeup . . .

Nesselhof Thunderegg - Sad Man Dancing

This is one of the great Simulacra, I think! See the little dancing man with the sad eyes? Dancing with his broken heart? I think it is one guy – it is a cut through one rock after all. So this is a stone of Loneliness and woe. I originally planned to sell this one, but when i spotted that, it instantly became a keeper.

Nesselhofs often seem to have a sadness about them, which may merit a special blog post one day . . . .

Look out for updates to US stones fairly soon, including many new locations and some amazing rocks.  I will also be adding some beautiful new Esterel stones soon, and I will do a dedicated showcase here for those!

T&T / TNT Thunderegg Showcase

Resisting any bad puns about explosions of TNT, I was recently able to get a hefty sack-full of uncut stones from this area, which I never did know much about!

T&T or TNT thundereggs are a less well-known location from the Mill Creek Wilderness Area, alongside such stones as Fallen Tree and Stein’s Pillar.  They are usually simple stones with clear brown agate (‘root-beer agate’) and quartz.  They are also one of the locations more prone to Amethyst, as in the example above. They are a hard stone to image though – it is hard to capture the 3D depth of these stones.  Above it just looks like a purple smudge, but in reality you can see that purple ghost drifting deep inside the stone and it is absolutely beautiful!

The above is an even stronger example of the 3D depth of these stones.  Not the best cut I ever did – it was broken and I had no choice. But I like it because there is such a nice little 3D world submerged in that dark agate! I seem to have missed the important parts of the core completely and the features are visible in the depths from ‘outside’ as floating ghosts. Line it up just right and you can see a perfect little funnel of levelling lines floating in there.

The above is an absolute classic stone in my experience, showing off all the basic characteristics nicely.  It is the elegant shapes that make these stones so appealing, as in the following, where an atoll formation has created a very nice peripheral cave.

The other half:

The agate is so clear and smooth that they were a nightmare to scan, with every speck of dust on the scanner showing up like a firework show.  They took a great polish though.  One or two of the stones surprised me by having white opal cores – and also more complex things like the following, which is a curious muddle of agate, brecciation and what look like tiny dendrites.

The clear agate often allows you to see deeply into the stones, making out the 3d structure inside.  The stone below is a fine example, with a largish cave and very detailed view of the core.

And the other half:

To round off though, here is a larger example that proves that the location can be quite dramatically complex.  This one has been in my gallery for a long time now, but exploring a sackful of its kin only makes me appreciate it more.