Fabre Minerals - What was its story?

Fabre Minerals was a company specialized in high-quality collectible minerals from around the world. Its founder, Jordi Fabre, publicly launched the company in September 1971, after a few months in a testing phase, meaning it was operating online but without being publicly promoted.


A BRIEF HISTORY (by Jordi Fabre)

I started in the mineral business over 40 years ago, sharing the work with my studies in Biology as well as with another job: printer. In those very busy days I mainly sold quality Spanish, Portuguese, and Moroccan specimens.

This was all done with the help of my brother Francesc, and it involved taking things on as part of a pleasant game, full of nice trips and unusual situations as I followed the trails of the wild deals with the, just as wild, miners.

During this period of my life I had the unbelievable chance to have in Barcelona one great gentleman: Don Joaquin Folch Girona, who back then was one of the world's best private mineral collectors. He looked after me and tolerated my young, crazy inexperience teaching me about a lot of things, always with his quiet "old style" and always with a tolerant smile on his lips. As it is easy to imagine, I learned a lot from him about mineralogy during those years, and I also was rewarded with his friendly companionship.

After he sadly died, I took a break for a while from my relationship with minerals, but quite quickly I decided to renew my passion as well as my business. I decided to aim for a more ambitious and professional kind of material, so I expanded my purchases into a far wider range of great localities with special focus on American minerals. During the same period I started to exhibit at the major shows, although now I only go to the two largest international ones: Munich (Germany) and Tucson (USA), and three Spanish Shows: Barcelona (MineralExpo Sants and Expominer) and Madrid (Escuela de Minas).

Spain in this period of the world's mineralogical history was like a desert, without significant collectors, without decent mineral Shows, and without any real mineralogical tradition. That said it was also the age of the great Spanish finds: Aliva mine gemmy Sphalerites, the best Eugui Dolomites, great La Collada and Berbes Fluorite, and many others.

So, slowly, using good examples from these finds, I managed to gain access to the US market, mainly at the Tucson Show, where over a few years I moved through various different rooms of the Executive Inn Hotel, as well as the Main Show where I exhibited for two years.

After this introductory period, finally I got an excellent location: the Lobby of the Executive Inn Hotel (The "Fishbowl"). This was a place where no one had ever exhibited before and where over the years I met many collectors, museums, magazines, and, in one sense, the "crème de la crème" of the mineral world. In 2005, due to remodeling at the Executive Inn, I decided to move to the new Hotel Clarion, where I was during 2005 and 2006. However, due to remodeling at the Clarion, I decided to move again to a more stable base: so from 2007 to 2016 I was in room 164 of the classic Hotel Inn Suites and in 2014 I also displayed in the Westward Look Hotel. Finally, in 2016, I decided to concentrate my efforts during Tucson on purchases, so after lots and lots of thought I stopped all selling from rooms.

So, something that was started just as a hobby that I shared with my passion for trips has grown slowly until now, and I have behind me a lot of deals, a lot of experiences, a lot of knowledge, and, best of all, a lot of friends. All together this has helped me to obtain more and better specimens from my classic sources as well as from other new sources, such as the private collections that I acquire as often as I can, or from new finds that I get from the people working for me in mines, thus trying to select "on the ground" the main novelties. Also I get from time to time some extremely unusual specimens due my good relationships with several significant Museums, the only practical source for some extremely scarce specimens.

As I have always had an interest in the more scientific aspects of Mineralogy I have also published articles in various journals and web sites. These include the Mineralogical Record (Fluorite and associated minerals from Asturias, Spain, Volume 23, pages 69-76 - Internet Mineral Sales, Volume 37, pages 199-201 - The Panasqueira Mines, Volume 45, pages 11-55) - Eureka! Self-Collected Minerals, Suplement Volume 53, pages 118-119 – Berbes!, Volume 55, pages 17-74) / Lapis (Panasqueira-Portugal, Volume 7-8/2014, pages 16-63) / ExtraLapis (The Panasqueira Mines: One Hundred Years of Fluorapatite, Volume 17/2013, pages 70-81) / Bocamina (Bellmunt del Priorato, un Yacimiento Histórico en Cataluña, Volume 7/2001, pages 28-63) and Revista de Minerales, as well as two pages in the multiple-author French book “Fluorite” (page 34-35), short columns on different web pages dedicated to mineralogy, advisor to different minerals magazines and three articles in the magazine Rocks & Minerals, one devoted to my personal collection: Jordi Fabre i Fornaguera, Collector of the Exquisite, Volume 85, November-December 2010, author Carles Curto (this article is on line, you can use this link), another related with one of the Forum I created in 2006: FMF Celebrates Five Years: A Conversation with Founder Jordi Fabre, Volume 86, September-October 2011, author Antonio Alcaide (this article is also on line, you can use this link) and another related with the MIM Museum, Volume 98, November-December 2023, author Bryan Swoboda and co-author Carles Manresa Pla.
And speaking of Bryan Swoboda, he has a company, BlueCap Productions, that offers magnificent mineral videos (the most well-known: What’s Hot... and Mineral Talks LIVE) in which I appear numerous times. I highly recommend visiting the BlueCap Productions website and enjoying the mineralogical spectacle there.
As an example, their What’s Hot in Ste. Marie 2023, where we bid farewell to my participation as an exhibitor in Mineral Shows, but without closing the door to future collaborations, as always, with minerals involved!

In 1996 attracted by the Internet technology I started my own web site. It was really one of the first of the worldwide Internet dealer web sites aimed at selling mineral specimens on-line, and clearly the pioneer of the European Internet dealers. When I started it I just considered it to be a complement to my regular sales, but it grew more and more, nowadays becoming one of the more important sources of sales. So on the Web you will find our latest selection of quality collector specimens, all of which are for sale. These pages currently represent a good sample of our more interesting stock.

In September 2006 our web site reached its 10th anniversary, so to celebrate this we published a special commemorative page that you can view by using this link. In it, apart from proposing special labels for Internet clients and starting a discussion forum, we showed the Fabre Minerals' planetarium, that is to say the 'who is who' of Fabre Minerals. We have provided information on specimens from around the world for collectors searching for high quality additions to their collections.