Collector Spotlight: Barron Nguyen

1) How many years have you been collecting and what started your passion?

I’ve been collecting for as long as I can remember, but I’ve only been into serious collecting for a couple years (4-5 years ago) for higher quality pieces. It’s a bit hazy, but one of my collecting memories when I was younger was a project to collect examples of several types of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, and this was when I was in primary school. I think one of the first things that kickstarted my passion was definitely visits to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum when I was younger and staring at all the many mineral species! Though I was young and didn’t really understand and appreciate them as I do now, it did start a plethora of questions about their formation that definitely did help with my interest in geology and collecting. To this day, I visit the Los Angeles Natural History Museum whenever I go to LA, and it’s my favorite museum! However, my interest in geology isn’t solely confined to minerals in general. Another precursor to my interest in collecting was definitely seismology! I think this was even earlier than my visits to the LA museum and even my project. I actually did make a primitive seismograph from popsicle sticks when I was younger, but it wasn’t exactly “effective” (I made a couple!). I also visited the Berkeley Seismology Lab often and stared at all the wonderful maps and instruments that they displayed. It was wonderful and definitely helped contribute to my current relationship with my love of mineral collecting.

2) What's the focus of your collection and has that changed through time? Why?

My current and main focus is definitely rare minerals, which I try to often find as gemmy rather than opaque, and with their faceted counterparts. Though it’s pretty difficult with most of them being micromounts or thumbnails, and also sometimes their astronomical prices, it’s definitely a challenge! I only relatively recently (2-3 ago) added the faceted stuff, but before it was mostly those rare minerals with most being micromounts or thumbnails. Of course, I don’t only collect these; sometimes there are really good thumbnails that simply aren’t “rare”, but I’ll get them anyways. I’ve also recently tried to get bigger samples of pieces, my miniature collection, but thumbnails are typically cheaper. Though this is my current focus, I also have an older side focus: my Californian reference thumbnails. Mainly weird and interesting species found across California that are only my reference pieces, not really in my “main mineral collection”, but just used for helping to identify stuff I might have in my other pieces. 

3) What do you like to do outside of mineral collecting? (hobbies, job, music taste, etc).

Though mineral collecting is one of my main hobbies, I also have other hobbies to do in my spare time… this might be a bit long haha. One of my favorite things is music, and I quite like a little of every genre. However, I must say that my favorite genres are definitely classical and jazz music. I tend to listen to more relatively “contemporary” classical composers, like Debussy, Ravel or Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Rautavaara etc. I also have been playing the piano and violin for a while, but I definitely like the piano more now that I am not forced to do it. Besides listening and playing, I also like to sometimes make some music! Music is always in my head whether I like it or not, so I thought I would capitalize off this and just write some of it down as a review and just for fun. Other than music, another one of my hobbies is learning languages. It’s a win-win because it will definitely help in the future and it’s a good way to pass time when I feel like I want to do something productive. Since there are so many languages I want to learn, I often spend more time deciding which language to learn rather than actually learning it. Despite this, I am currently learning Norwegian and I am also trying to learn Spanish; I can read it, but I can’t speak it. Besides these current ones I’m learning I can also speak some other languages which I am definitely better at. Besides languages, I also have a new love for art! Mainly graphite pencil drawings, but I only started again like a month ago-ish after like 5 years of not drawing so I really haven’t completed anything. I must say though it requires a lot of focus and peace, like making music, so it’s a bit tricky to find times when I won’t be interrupted or disturbed which is mainly at night. Other than these hobbies, I love to go outdoors in nature, mainly to cold places (I hate the heat), and to go hiking, preferably with myself or a small group. I find it’s very refreshing to just take a step outside of daily life, far away from the hustle and bustle, and just find time to enjoy and wind down. Luckily I live relatively close to the ocean, so every couple of months or so, I get to just stare and walk on the beach for a couple hours! 

4) Have you been to any shows? If so, what's your favorite part of them? If not, are there any particular ones you would want to experience one day?

I’ve been to many shows around the San Francisco Bay Area, but my favorite is definitely the annual San Francisco show! My favorite part of them are definitely the displays and the minerals for sale that are like a “mini-museum”. Though I'm very nervous when meeting new people, another favorite part is definitely connecting with local collectors and visitors from other parts of the world. Despite my gratitude to be so close to these shows, I definitely really want to visit Tucson, the Saint Marie show in France and the Munich show in Germany, but definitely more so for Munich and St. Marie because I’m a sucker for Europe and I really want to visit Europe one day. 

5) Is there anyone who has inspired you in this field? Do you look up to the collection of someone in particular? 

Because I haven’t had the chance or courage to meet a lot of people, I still haven’t gotten to know well a lot of people in the San Francisco area that I know have mineral collections or are very knowledgeable about geology in general. So, a lot of the collections I look up to are people in YMC! I definitely love Yi Sun’s collection of his excellent rare species and I always enjoy him when he posts his pieces. Kyle Kevorkian’s collection of thumbnails is also always amazing to look at. Christopher Stefano’s collection is also superb; a bunch of top-tier rare species that are just mind blowing! I generally look up to everyone’s collection, and love Tama’s emerald, Effren’s calcite, Kyle’s nambulite, Filip’s hyalophane, Erin’s calcite, Alex’s turquoise, Tim’s gold, Gawan’s neptunites, just to name a few! I also in a way look up to those who are super knowledgeable about minerals in general. I had the pleasure to meet Charles Trantham a few years ago and he was super nice and encouraged my collecting. I also met Alfredo Petrov at the San Francisco show a year or two years ago, and I didn’t even know he was there until I overheard a man talking about how he (Alfredo) was giving change in 1 dollar coins or something along those lines! Quite a funny story, but when I found him, he had a whole table of strange minerals, an alfredopetrovite, which I got, and even a sanidine from North Korea! Meeting these people definitely helped encourage my passion for minerals.

6) If you could give any advice to someone new to the hobby, what would it be?

 Since a large part of mineral collecting rests on buying minerals, budget is a large part of mineral collecting. Unless you self-collect, it’s a way to lower costs, but getting those famous localities that are off-limits and or are defunct is really difficult. Personally, for me, I’m a high school student that doesn’t currently have a job, so mineral collecting really rests on how I handle my finances. One of my ways to reduce costs is to really wait for times where getting a specimen is a deal, in other words, patience is really important if you want to save money. Of course, this is difficult with focuses where a certain specimen is rare, but in general it’s a good habit to wait for good deals. I also keep my mineral collection relatively small, physical and numerically. I only have roughly 40 minerals part of my “main” collection, not counting my reference minerals, and most of them are thumbnails or bordering on micromounts. I began to sell some minerals that I had in order to fund my mineral collecting expenses, so in a way my collecting is self-sustaining, and I would really recommend that. 

7) How has mineral collecting, or YMC, affected your plans going into the future? 

Mineral collecting, and my passion in geology has greatly affected my plans going into the future! I am a physics person, so I definitely want to do something that is connected with geology. I also have a large interest in astronomy and astrophysics, so maybe I could even focus on a career connected to geology one-day. YMC, on the other hand, has greatly improved the amount of people that I can connect to that have an interest in minerals, so I really look forward to learning anything I can from such knowledgeable people and making new friends. This would have been something unimaginable to me before as my local mineral club is mainly geared toward fossils, and jewelry making, so it’s a great opportunity to be able to discuss minerals with people that have the same interests as I have.