My name is Laurent and I’m from Belgium. I’ve been passionate about minerals for as long as I can remember. My specific love for alpine minerals came later, when I saw my first gwindel quartz from Switzerland. I was amazed by the color, luster and complexity of the crystal, I had never seen such an interesting crystallization. This specimen stills hold a nice place in my collection.

Beside that, I was fascinated by the raw environment in which these crystals were found. Alpine mountains are beautiful but can offer pretty extreme conditions. It’s not within everyone’s reach to get to these high areas come back down with the backpack full of stones.

Some years later, I had the chance to dig in the Mont-Blanc area and find my first crystal cleft with smoky quartz and pink, nearly red, fluorite. It wasn’t a big pocket but I’ll never forget the sight of such mineral perfection, coming out of all this mineral chaos after being buried underground for millions of years. Since then, I stopped collecting worldwide minerals to focus on the Alpine and Alpine-type deposits.