Collector Spotlight: Gabe Ward
How many years have you been collecting and what started your passion?
I have been collecting fossils exclusively for almost 21 years, and I started seriously collecting mineral specimens ~3 years ago. I remember picking up rocks on the school playground in kindergarten and, much to the chagrin of my teachers, bringing them all in after recess. I don’t know exactly what started this habit, but as far as I can remember, I’ve always collected rocks. I rapidly gravitated towards fossils, instead of minerals, and I don’t know exactly why, but I think a lot of it had to do with accessibility. Growing up in Alabama was wonderful for a fossil collector!
My father took note of my early interest and learned as much as he could about the world of fossils so he could take me out collecting and teach me all about them! I couldn’t’ve asked for a better kickstart in to the rock world. In 2000, my family joined a local club that took members on field trips, and the first field trip we went on was to a site where one could find Lower Carboniferous crinoids – I was hooked! Though my interest for a long time was solely in Carboniferous-aged crinoids, minerals were always on the periphery of my hobby.
I didn’t start seriously collecting minerals until 3 years ago. I accompanied a friend of mine to a show in Chicago, and I happened to see a fluorite specimen I liked. I thought it would make a nice desk ornament, so I bought it. That one purchase spiraled me into quite the obsession! Such a slippery slope…
What's the focus of your collection and has that changed through time? Why?
The focus (or lack thereof…) of my mineral collection hasn’t really changed much in the time I’ve been collecting. I like to tell myself that I’m specializing in minerals from Ojuela, but I pretty much collect any and all aesthetic and interesting specimens.
I have made a serious effort in the last half-year to buy less quantity and focus more on quality, though that’s not really part of the “focus” of my collection. Though mildly unrelated, the focus of my fossil collection changed, in part, out of necessity. Early on in collecting, I gravitated towards crinoids (shoot me a message if you’d like to learn more!). I collected anything and everything though, until I ran out of room. Today, my fossil collection is almost entirely Lower Carboniferous crinoids from the Eastern US, and it consists of several thousand crinoid cups and crowns.
I don’t see myself moving away from the eclectic nature of my collecting, but I am sure aesthetics will always be my primary focus
What do you like to do outside of mineral collecting? (hobbies, job, music taste, etc). *If you do not want to answer this, choose one extra mod supplied question as a substitute*
Outside of mineral collecting, I have a few hobbies. I am an avid auto racer – I enjoy doing timed events, rather than racing wheel-to-wheel (like NASCAR), since timed laps encourage perfection. I like to play music as well, and I play a number of different instruments. I spent some time dabbling in music production, though through college, it became difficult to continue recording. My apartment neighbors were less-than-thrilled with the drums and loud guitars.
I have been doing marketing work for the past year, and I will be starting a marketing PhD program next year. I have always wanted to be in the world of academia, though for much of my life, I thought it’d be in paleontology. I fell in love with marketing research when I accidentally found my way into the wrong class while pursuing my second undergrad degree. Aside from the above, I love spending time with my family and helping people with their businesses!
Is there anyone who has inspired you in this field? Do you look up to the collection of someone in particular?
There are so many people who have inspired me in this field! It’s hard to call out names since, everywhere I look, there’s always someone to learn from.
I met Jordan Root fairly soon after I started collecting minerals. He has helped me over the past little while in all sorts of ways, but he has been particularly helpful in steering me in the direction of quality, rather than quantity. When I first started collecting minerals, I bought just about every single rock I saw that kindled some sort of joy for me. In doing so, my collection rapidly became one of few good specimens, and lots of mediocrity. I am thankful to Jordan for (rather harshly) snapping me out of buying everything and helping me in finding my interests and clarifying my personal goals as a collector.
Kyle Kevorkian has been very helpful to me as well. I very much admire his collecting method and his focus on aesthetics, as well as his insistence on finding the “right” specimen, rather than settling or making compromises. There isn’t anything wrong with seeing the beauty in every mineral specimen, but I aspire to be as discerning as Kyle is someday. Tucson 2020 was a phenomenal learning experience for me, in no small part, because of the oft-confusing experience of browsing for mineral specimens with Kyle.
I hope you guys, Jordan and Kyle, don’t mind the shoutout – I really appreciate you, and thank you for making me a better collector.
Are you a stay-at-home collector or do you collect on the field too?
I am absolutely a field collector! With that said, collecting minerals “in the field” has been challenging. In my city in Alabama, there are a number of rock piles from the local quarry. I happened to find a few of these rock piles that have decent fluorite, calcite, strontianite, and dolomite. With that said, as fun as it is to collect minerals in the field, I have a tough time reconciling my efforts to collect for aesthetics and my interests in field collecting. I think I can count on one hand the number of specimens I’ve self-collected that I would’ve thought about buying at a show. It is an absolute blast to get outside and collect some minerals in spite of the specimen quality. The pieces I’ve collected myself will always be special to me.
While aesthetic and top quality mineral specimens are difficult to self-collect and rather easy to buy, the fossils I collect are quite the opposite! I don’t think I’ve ever seen any fossil specimens at a show that I felt I needed to buy. Since I’ve specialized so much in the paleo-realm, the chances of running across something that fits my collection at a show are veeeeeery slim. These two hobbies, though similar on the surface, are quite dichotomous sometimes!
If you could give any advice to someone new to the hobby, what would it be?
Don’t buy too much! I assume pretty much everybody does this when they are first starting out, though I’ve yet to verify. As I briefly touched on above, I was very spend-happy when I first started collecting, and it would’ve been much wiser to spend the time and money learning about the hobby and about what makes a good mineral specimen good. I am still learning, but I am taking my time and buying much more carefully nowadays.
On a similar note, I highly suggest those new to the hobby seek out the advice and help of those more experienced in the field. Ask questions and ask for advice. Doing so has benefited me so much in the last year. I certainly don’t, or shouldn’t, speak for the more experienced collectors here, but I am always eager to help or answer questions if I am able to. I hope this is true of most everyone else, especially in the YMC group. I have personally found this group to be very collaborative and engaging, and I think every new collector should take full advantage of the collective knowledge the Young Mineral Collectors possess.
What specific aspect of the hobby would you like to learn more about?
Oh gosh… There are so many things that I don’t understand in the world of minerals, but there are a couple I feel I don’t have a strong grasp on, but would immediately like to know more:
I took a bit of chemistry in college, and I feel I’ve maxed out, in the mineral world, on what little I retained from college very quickly. I very much want to know more about minerals from the chemistry arena. Recently, I’ve been learning about the adamite/olivenite series and what makes a “cuprian adamite” different from a zincolivenite, and so on. I think I know so little about this facet of the hobby that I can’t even describe what I want to learn more about. Not a great start, but I think I’ll get there eventually!
In the time I’ve spent collecting fossils, I have spent MANY hours prepping them. I have slowly built a fairly well-equipped tool arsenal for prepping crinoid fossils, and while there is some crossover in the mineral prep world, there isn’t much. I want to learn a lot more about the materials and methods involved in preparing mineral specimens. I have started working on a few specimens slowly, using saws and air scribes to remove matrix, and using an air abrasive machine to remove soft matrix and residues off of the crystals themselves (air abrasion is like cheating – so awesome!). Of course, this all comes nowhere near fracture filling and proper specimen trimming, and I am still horrified to do any work on nice specimens. I don’t know how far I want to take this – I never expect to be so good at mineral prep that I don’t call on others for nice specimens, but I have certainly put my limited skillset to good use on a few easy specimens.