ZA Minerals (Adriaan and Oy-ling): Part of our story

The following account was written by Oy-Ling, documenting the early years of ZA Minerals – Please check out their website here! More information about how to contact the author (and buy a few minerals!) can be found at the end.

“Most people don’t believe that you can sell rocks and minerals for a living!”

When I asked Adriaan how he got started in the mineral business, he answered, “By being delusional”. Being a mineral dealer could be compared to being a gambler. You have to take risks – sometimes they pay off, and other times we learn lessons.

Adriaan dabbled in minerals and (shock horror) crystal healing in the 90’s. He purchased his very first stone from Karl Sprich’s stall in Menlyn when he was 18 years old. It was a clear quartz scepter from Madagascar, which he still has today. My first crystal was a really ugly amethyst, which I had purchased at one of the many mineral exhibitions that were popular in the 90’s – probably from Cresta shopping mall (Perhaps I was 8 or 9 years old?) Around that time the South African mineral dealers would organize mall exhibitions and take over courtyard areas to trade specimens, rough rock, polished crystals and jewelry. It was a really crazy time, as the Rand was far stronger than it is now and many mineral dealers could afford to travel to the big mineral shows around the US and Europe, buy in $$$ or Euro to sell back in South Africa.

I met Adriaan in 2010, being allocated a stall next to his permanent Sunday stall at the then B&B Rosebank Rooftop market in Johannesburg. At the time, I owned a couple of chip bracelets and random rocks that I had self-collected or purchased when I was a child. My stand sold corsets and my hand-made hair accessories – aimed very much for Durban July attendees or OTT theatre performers – specifically burlesque and drag. I had very few customers while Adriaan’s rock shop (that he was taking care of for Karl and Lucy Sprich) had queues upon queues of customers. I would dash to help out when they got too busy.

At that stage, Adriaan had been dabbling in rocks for 12 years at least. When he worked in road construction in Mpumalanga in 1998, he earned R1800 per month (an entry-level salary). He was offered a crystal that turned out to be  Cactus Quartz. This elusive quartz had been around since the 50’s, but no-one knew the locality and geologists and dealers alike had been searching ever since.

Adriaan asked around and eventually found the source in Kwa-Mahlangu – in a village named Boekenhouthoek. He never mentioned the location to anyone – as from experience as soon as the location is leaked: mineral dealers descend from around the world or word gets out of a ‘diamond rush’ and chaos ensues.

(Remember the great big ‘diamond’ find of June 2021, that turned out to be quartz? It caused immediate ecological damage to the area after thousands of people descended on the site with shovels and pickaxes, believing they had found valuable diamonds).

For a few years, he worked with the local mineral dealers who purchased from him at affordable prices. Karl and Lucy had taken a significant amount of flats to Sainte Marie aux mines in 2002 – where customers could not wait for the unboxing and just had to assist to get the first pickings.

Karl and Clive Queit encouraged Adriaan to book his own stall in Sainte Marie aux mines the following year in 2003 – where he returns annually and has been in the same location ever since then.
 
At some point a local dealer followed Adriaan to the source (of the “spirit quartz”) and released the location to the public – dealers put their capital together to ‘buy out’ Adriaan, so he in turn asked Jose Bada to assist him in maintaining some order to assist the miners, before certain dealers decided they had ‘dominion’ over the area.
 
Cactus Quartz prices are still somewhat affordable today as greedy rockhounds could not get in and push the prices up high, as we now see with many once affordable minerals and crystals on the market (take Zimbabwe amethyst for example – when we were selling Ben McCray’s amethyst in 2016, we experienced Italian dealers come to us to tell us they would find the location and be our competition – little did they know we had no idea of the locality until 2019).
 
While Adriaan was trading at international mineral shows – to get there he had to work multiple jobs, from Road Construction to installing air-conditioning, Pet signage to markets.
He assisted Lucy and Karl on Sundays in Joburg and every Tucson in Jan / Feb  (they gave him some space to sell his own minerals), he worked for Clive Queit at Earthstone Fire and Ice in Montecasino, and Jose Bada outsourced his buying to Adriaan. He made jewellery and traded at Irene every 2nd Saturday with his mum Maggie, whom he drove from shop to shop selling minerals out the back of his car. This also funded his and Southern African Minerals’ Namibian trips and paid for his daughter’s school fees and extra-curricular activities. 
 
By 2011, Adriaan and I started dating, and by the end of the year, we started eBay. He started listing specimens from home from his cellphone. Between sourcing trips and exhibitions, we realised we needed a person to list our specimens full-time. I was a relative newcomer to the world of stones and slowly started learning about the geological aspect of the industry while assisting with admin. At that time, I had a full-time and three other part-time jobs, which also assisted with funding my two passions: Minerals and Burlesque. We moved to a small shared office space in Centurion where Adriaan employed 1 person and we listed just 10 stones a day in 2015.
Adriaan in the background holding purple spirit quartz; in the foreground is a picture from the 2003 Mineralien Welt magazine of Karl Sprich unwrapping minerals on the floor along with Diana Bruce.
The magazine from which the above picture is featured - Mineralien Welt, 2003.
The following year we moved the business to my parents’ cottage in Johannesburg, when we started employing more people but quickly outgrew the space and found larger premises in Norwood, where Paula joined us in 2017. Paula was thrown in the deep-end and had to cram geological knowledge, listing up to 35 stones a day!
 
 
Writing this and looking back is such a crazy ride! If I could tell you the amount of times we went back to the drawing board to change the way we did business (this even before the rise of AI) is absolutely insane.
 
The trials and tribulations of dealing with suppliers from all backgrounds, as well as customers with all sorts of personalities. There are scammers on both ends of business (supplier and client).
 
It always amazes me that we somehow manage to pull through with grit and perseverance – We have sold my car to buy a collection, sold Adriaan’s car to buy Namibian minerals and get to Munich.
 
When we grew too rapidly we had to clean out my personal credit card, and delved into our overdrafts to pay school fees and half salaries and made up the cash fast by selling more minerals to pay the balance before our staff’s direct debits were due.
 
 
Some of our biggest fights were with our collapsing post office to ensure our parcels go out, fighting with FedEx for overcharging us every month, or fighting with eBay for not showing our listings. 
 
It all seemed so,so daunting when we didn’t know what we were doing, but we did it anyway. By taking risks, failing and learning to get up and persevere.
 
To believe that we could make this passion into a business. 

You can find out more about ZA Minerals through their many channels – Instagram, Facebook, their website, or TikTok!