Natural History Museum: Research and Collections: Mineral Sciences

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is pleased to announce the donation of a portion of the David Eidahl Mineral Collection by Duane and Charlotte Eidahl, parents of the late collector. The Eidahls have placed the remainder of the collection on loan to the museum with the intent of donating the entire collection in installments in coming years. They have made clear their desire to keep the collection together and to make it available for the enjoyment of the public in their son’s memory.

David Eidahl’s untimely death from a cerebral aneurism in 1982 at the age of 26 shocked and saddened the mineral collecting community, locally and around the world. David grew up in Los Angeles and began collecting minerals at an early age. He graduated from Pacific Palisades High School in 1974 and, while attending Pepperdine University in Malibu, he began working part-time for Pala International in Fallbrook, California. He became a full-time employee in 1976 and by the time of his death had become director of mineral sales and purchases for the company and its shop “The Collector.”

His intense love for minerals and sophisticated appreciation for mineral aesthetics helped him to become the youngest major mineral collector and dealer of his time. In a very short time span, he assembled a world-class collection of fine mineral “miniatures.” At the 1980 Tucson Gem & Mineral Society Show, he won the coveted Ed McDole Memorial Trophy for “best rocks in the Show,” as well as the Walt Lidstrom Memorial Award for the best individual mineral, an exquisite crystallized gold from the Colorado Quartz mine in Mariposa County, California.

David’s collection is not large in number, consisting of only 32 specimens, and the largest specimen, a gemmy aquamarine crystal, is a mere 9 cm in length; but it has been said that each and every piece in the collection approaches perfection. The collection is especially rich in old classics, such as a dramatic stacking of epidote chevron twins from Knappenwand, Austria, elegant specimens of both crystallized and wire silver from Kongsberg, Norway, a remarkable cluster of large, lustrous azurite crystals from Bisbee, Arizona and a group of fine gold crystals from the Massachusetts Lode in Grass Valley, California that was one of the “Famous 25” specimens originally in the collection of William Sansom Vaux (1811-1882). Contemporary masterpieces are also well represented by such wonderful pieces as a 60mm-long deep blue crystal of jeremejevite from near Swakopmund, Namibia and a gemmy cherry-red rhodochrosite crystal from the N’Chwaning #2 mine, Kuruman, South Africa. Every specimen provides the viewer with a unique visual delight and a new appreciation for the best that the mineral world has to offer.

David relished sharing his love of minerals and took it upon himself to give other young collectors a hand, as exemplified by a guest editorial that he wrote for the Mineralogical Record in 1977 (Vol. 8, p. 426) entitled “Helping the New Collectors.” It is in this context that it is especially appropriate that his collection will be on display in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where it will provide encouragement and inspiration to many generations of mineral collectors to come.