Mike Sanders is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. He has been a collector for 55 years! We asked him what his makes him excited about gems and minerals, he says “The adventures I’ve had hunting for mineral specimens (mainly in NM) in so many enchanting remote places has been at least as much fun and exciting as finding the minerals!”. He primarily collects minerals from New Mexico Mexico and Morocco. He has a special love for Fluorite, because there are multiple good fluorite locations in NM. Mike started collecting when he met Tony Potucek in 1970 when they were both geology students at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He said he knew nothing about minerals, but Tony was already a serious collector by then and I really like his specimens. They made multiple field collecting trips to various locals in NM and Arizona, and from there grew another amazing collector! We asked Mike an interesting story, this is what he shared with us, “I started collecting at the Blanchard mine in 1987 and got to know the claim owners Ray DeMark, Brian Huntsman (who made the famous 1979 linarite discovery at the mine in 1979) and Robert Dickie. I was able to buy out Dickie”s claim share in 1994 and along with Ray, Brian and others, have collected countless numbers of really good specimens from the mine since then!