My interest in minerals started at a very early age, when I first collected pebbles from a fresh deposit in my Grandmother's garden in Germany. Although my birthplace of New York City afforded me little opportunity to collect or even see minerals, my family owned a country home in Pennsylvania to which we would drive every weekend. Passing the Buckwheat dump in the town of Franklin, New Jersey, I was bewildered to see collectors bent over piles of rocks, swinging away with sledgehammers. I was curious to know what they were doing. Later, I took a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History, where I saw my first Franklin mineral, a huge, perfect franklinite crystal perched on white calcite with a wide band of rich deep red zincite across the front. I was so taken by the piece that I begged and cajoled my parents until they finally gave in and agreed to stop and let me collect. Contacts with collectors there led me to collecting opportunities in the zeolite-laden quarries of West Paterson, also in New Jersey.
 
In 1957, I began working part-time for R. C. Romanella, one of three or four active mineral dealers in New York City at the time. Even at this early stage in my career, I had contacts with many of the largest museums and curators in the world, including Dr. Mason of the AMNH, Dr. Switzer of the Smithsonian and Dr. Frondel of Harvard. My first buying trip overseas took place in 1959, a time in which less than a handful of American dealers ventured out of the Western Hemisphere. A "quick flight" in those days meant seventeen hours in the air, with mandatory stopovers in Newfoundland and Ireland. Many of my contacts from those earliest days still keep in touch with me and provide me with classic old European specimens. In 1964-65, being stationed with the US Army in Germany gave me even more opportunities to purchase and squirrel away numerous fine pieces from well known dealers such as Krantz in Bonn, Deyrolle in Paris, Maucher in Munich, Swiss stralhers, and the like. After twelve years of managing the New York office, I left the employment of Mr. Romanella (by then Commercial Mineral Corporation) in 1969 to start my own business.
 
My first activities after starting my own business were concentrated in obtaining fine classic specimens by purchase or in exchange with museums throughout Europe, including the Sorbonne, Humboldt University, Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna, the British Museum and numerous others. Shortly thereafter I began to take periodic buying trips to Spain, Portugal, Morocco and France in the west and south, and Bulgaria, Romania and the German Democratic Republic in the east. Later, I expanded my collecting horizons to include Afghanistan, Pakistan and numerous countries in central and south Africa, including the Congo, Zambia, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Nigeria, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa. Starting in 1995 I began traveling to the USSR, and just last year to China.
 
Many of my travels then, as well as now, incorporated my love for rare cut gems, and I was always on the search for the unusual cuttable broken bits among the fine minerals. My business was built on both, and continues to this day.
 
My hobbies are pretty much mineral-related: collecting antique books, antique scientific instruments, hard-stone carvings and antique art objects related to mining.