Send a specimen

If you have something and want to know what its powder says, post it and it will be streaked, photographed on the same plate as everything else, and written up here under your locality with your name on the find if you want it there, and it comes back to you afterwards.

£18 a specimen, payable once the entry is written. Read within a fortnight of arriving. Nothing to pay if the powder says nothing.

Send a specimen 0113 496 0271

A worn hand holding a dark, glittering lump of ore the size of a walnut.
A posted specimen, the size most of them arrive at.

Directly

  • 0113 496 0271 evenings, and most of Saturday
  • post@haverskeld.example answered within a week, usually less
  • Haverskeld, in the north-west of the county post the specimen, not the box it came in — small ones go in a matchbox with cotton wool

Before you post

  • Say where it came from, as precisely as you are willing to.
  • Say what you think it is, and say if you have no idea. Both are useful.
  • Do not clean it. What is on it is often the interesting part.
  • Nothing radioactive, nothing containing loose asbestos fibre, nothing wet.

Or write here

The form checks what you have typed and then opens your mail client with it filled in, because this site is static and has nowhere to post it to. The telephone works either way.