TerraTreasures Homepage
|| Dominican amber, Borneo amber and Burmese amber For Sale ||
current as of - December 2011
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Welcome to TerraTreasures and Adventures101 Amber pages. We offer museum quality Dominican amber with insects for sale and also rare Dominican blue amber for sale. Our collections include museum quality display specimens of rare insects in amber, unusual botanicals and flowers in amber and also rare Dominican blue amber. We have been collecting amber in the field since 1993, including extensive excavations in New Jersey, North Carolina, Wyoming, several localities in Alaska, and of course many many trips to the Dominican Republic where we have chiseled out beautiful Dominican amber gemstones in small hand excavated tunnels deep into the rich amber veins way up in the mountains north of Santiago. We have some cool photos of the Dominican amber mines and some short video links of us chiseling out amber gemstones in the amber mines and we have some neat information about amber research on Dominican amber, Dominican blue amber and ambers found throughout the world. Enjoy! Latest update December 2011 - We heading back to India in early January 2012 with the American Museum of Natural History to collect cambay amber in the lignite formations north of Mumbai. Much work is being done on preparing the Cambay Shale amber with new inclusions being found quite often. To see photos of our previous collecting trip to India in 2010 visit this link http://www.cambayamber.com Latest update June 2010 - We have just returned from collecting amber in the America Midwest with the American Museum of Natural History. We have been collecting amber and other fossils out west since 1997. This trip we found many beautiful gemstones and will be posting a few photos and some data shortly. Latest update January 2010 - We have just returned from collecting amber in Asia with the American Museum of Natural History. We have found many beautiful gemstones and will be posting a few photos and some data shortly. Hopefully we'll have some papers to link by mid July 2010. Latest update April 2009 - After many days of rain there has been a huge soil slide at the Carlos Diaz amber mine east of La Toca. No one was injured but the mines are completely slumped over. Very few miners are working La Toca as the workings and it is difficult to haul out the siltstones and rock. The workings at La Bucara are easier because they are much less deep than at La Toca. The amber from La Bucara is different from La Toca although the mines are physically fairly close to each other. The amber from La Bucara tends to be much harder but we think the inclusions are more diverse from La Toca. We have some very nice inclusions including an almost unheard of Solpugid, several mantids, a few partial lizards some cool flowers and some really unusual flies. We will be prepping and photographing rough over the next few months. Latest update January 2009 - It has been a very wet year, it is still raining in the mountains as of late December 2008. There are just a few miners are working in the the La Bucara, La Toca and Palo Alto amber mines. We have some very nice specimens that were recently excavated in the La Toca and La Bucara amber mines in late autumn 2008, we will be prepping and photographing rough over the next few months. We have found a very rare nearly complete reptile from the Palo Alto mine - at this point we think it could perhaps be possibly the only one found in Palo Alto! Latest update May 2007 - The winter heavy rains have stopped - most miners are working in the the La Bucara amber mines. We have some very nice nice large clear gemstones from La Bucara - very hard with little fractures and nice color. We also have some very large rough specimens with very large inclusions. We will be prepping and photographing rough over the next few months, we have already found a beautiful Phasmid the best we have ever seen from the Dominican Republic! Latest update August 2007 - Although the heavy rains have stopped - the La Toca amber mines still have much water, the La Bucara amber mines have little amber compared to La Toca although they are just on the other side of the ridge from La Toca. We did not find much amber in the La Toca mines and the miners had little amber themselves - we expected to find quite a bit more amber in La Toca because of all the amber we were finding in the tailings from the mines. One mine in La Toca had 9 miners working inside the mine the most we have ever seen inside of 1 mine. This mine was perhaps 200 meters deep or more than 600 feet - more than 2 football lengths - not for the claustrophobic. The La Bucara amber mine was nearly dry compared to La Toca, one of the 2 seams being worked at La Bucara had 6 miners working a seam both a high seam and a low seam at the same mine. We found some nice gemstones at La Bucara - very hard with little fractures and nice color. We will be prepping and photographing rough over the next few months, we have already found a beautiful partial DamselFly and our first ever Lacewing!. Latest update April 2007 - Due to the heavy rains of late the Palo Quemado and Los CaCaos mines are not being worked at all due to the danger of mudslides and cave ins, as a result there is little to no blue amber being excavated. In the last month there are only perhaps 2 dozen miners working the mines north of Santiago as compared to several hundred miners that would normally be working this time of year as all the mines have water - even the mines near the top of the ridge line. We haven't ever seen as much rain as we have in the last year, nearly a year of rainy season weather. April 2006 - We have just returned from another collecting trip in the Dominican Republic. We hiked up to the La Toca amber mines and video taped some new workings and although it was the end of April and the the La Toca mines are along a ridge line at the top of the mountains December 2005 - We have just added links to our New Jersey Amber Pages, our Wyoming Amber Pages and our Alaskan Amber Pages. Very have hundreds of photographs of our collecting friends, the amber excavations, the amber specimens and of course the amber inclusions. Many of our New Jersey amber photos are from the very early days of 1993 through 1998 pre digital so please keep that in mind when viewing these photos that are fairly old, enjoy! August 30, 2004 - We have just returned from another collecting trip in the Dominican Republic. In the mountains there are less and less miners actually working in the amber mines and as we suspected the miners are finding little 1st quality blue amber, and little amber in general, we excavated in 3 mines at La Cumbre and found almost nothing of significance. The miners have reopened some old workings at La Toca, however as always La Toca has the highest percentage of oxidized amber, whereas La Cumbre and Palo Quemado have the highest percentage of 1st quality fossiliferous gemstones, although we did see some very large amber stones from La Toca that the miners brought to us while we were excavating in La Cumbre. We have returned with some very nice large amber gemstones from La Cumbre barren of fossils but wonderful for jewelry work, and some very nice fossil gemstones, including an exceptional feather, a large Cerambycid, several snails and some cool flies with our paleoentomologist friends at the American Museum of Natural History will examine and identify. When we see how difficult it is to extract even 1 small gemstone after many many hours of sweaty chiseling through the rock deep in a mine and how perhaps only 1 gemstone out of thousands is significant, it is no wonder many miners have left the mountains and gone into the towns to work. When we first started collecting amber in the mountains north and northwest of Santiago we estimate there were some 400 miners working all the mines, now we estimate there are less than 80 miners in all the mines. Perhaps a new abundant vein of fossiliferous gem quality amber will be found but if that does not happen, our collections and your collections will be of more significance. July 30, 2004 - A slow moving landslide caused by floods in late spring of 2005 have destroyed the homes of some 40 miners near Palo Quemado and La Nueva Toca amber mines. No one was injured and all have moved. The mine workings are now covered by tons of dirt on the roadside of the mountain. We have several hundred new specimens that we are preparing and photographing and will be offering soon, including some very unusual spiders.

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in loving memory of our father Richard Luzzi March 1928 - May 2010

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