very nice. I don't know much about minerals and such, but I know what looks nice

Nice finds and gifts!

If you've got a place to find tourmaline, that's pretty cool. Is it in the Sierra?

Nope, at the moment I live in Serbia. This country has quite a plenty of gemstones and minerals to be found, mostly in southern regions. However, some beauties can be found here and there in the northern region, where I live.

Oh, that's cool! It has a nice crystal shape. Is it actually hard and gemmy or is it brittle?

We find some schorl in the Sierra and quite a bit in Riverside and San Diego, although a lot of it is the more brittle type, which we usually call "Rotten". Even those pieces have some nice crystal shapes, but they have a tendency to fall apart, particularly the larger ones.

Occasionally we find some good gemmy ones, and even some colored stuff. We're lucky enough to know some mine owners as well, so once in a while I've been able to collect colored tourmaline at some of the more well known mines.

It appears to be on the harder side, haven't seen any random chipping like some other stones in my collection. While not visible in the photo above it also seems to have some small quartz crystals on one side of it's surface.

Very cool! Sounds like the more solid stuff. What kind of rock is it found in? Is it from a pegmatite?

Also, the upper left piece looks like Brazilian material I'm familiar with, although I've seen similar stuff from Russia.

The Ocean Jasper is from Madagascar, as you probably know. I've heard that that site has been mined out.

I'm not sure, I found it burried into the ground among various rocks and some quartz chunks.

Upper left's locality I am not sure of.

As for Ocean Jasper, yeah, one out of four mines is completely mined out, and it's uncertain how much other 3 deposits have left before they're mined out as well.

Are you familiar with pegmatites? They're basically granite where the grains get very large,and they can have pockets with crystals and gemstones, sometimes very large. Most aquamarine and tourmaline come from pegmatites.

So it would be in an area with granite, and you would find quartz, feldspar and mica, possibly with large crystals, and other minerals and gemstones if the conditions are right. One of the most common are pockets or zones with schorl, and more rarely gem pockets.

In any case, it sounds like a place worth poking around in. Did you find any other tourmaline crystals? -Sounds like you could possibly find some quartz crystals as well.

Did you find any other tourmaline crystals? -Sounds like you could possibly find some quartz crystals as well.

Not really, like I said this one was a lucky shot, as tourmalines are not known to occur normally in northern Serbia. Most we have up here is jaspers, chert, jaspers and....jaspers. I did find one very small agate vein inside of a chert, again a lucky shot. You can see it here http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24194768/

Are you positive it's tourmaline? There are a couple of other things that look similar to this... Easiest tests would probably be hardness and streak.

That other piece is cool. It would probably look quite nice cut and polished.

I had the piece examined awhile back and it was identified as tourmaline. Sadly that agate piece I showed you is too small to be cut and polished, it's barely 2 centimeters in length.

That's cool. It's really a neat piece. It does make one think there must be more in the area though...

I suppose you could possibly tumble polish the agate sometime if nothing else. -Or I'm sure it's fine as it is...