Canadians close in on $7-million gem collection

O A Montreal doctor has scored what may be regarded in mineralogy circles as one of this century’s major coups.

After obtaining an option to buy one of the world’s finest privately-owned mineral collections, Dr Donald Doell is attempting to raise the $7 million necessary to bring the collection to Ottawa.

A director of the emergency department at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital, Doell has undertaken this crusade on behalf of the National Museum of Canada where it will eventually be displayed.

Under a recent agreement, Doell and a Toronto fund-raising consultant, Stan Gibson, have four years to buy what experts consider to be the most significant mineral collection ever assembled by any individual.

Located in the home of Rochester, N.Y., crystallographer William Pinch, the 16,000-piece accumulation of mineral specimens and gemstones is reputed to outweigh even the famous collection at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. in terms of scientific and aesthetic significance.

It represents the life’s work of the 47-year-old former Eastman Kodak employee who has been collecting mineral specimens since the day, 40 years ago, when he found a fossil at his aunt’s farm in West Bloomfield.

After honing his mineralogy skills through reading and travelling, Pinch has spent the past four decades creaming off the jewels of some of the world’s leading collections. Russian government His reputation is such that the Russian government solicited his advice on ways to market some of the exhibits at the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow.

“I believe in time the Pinch Collection will be recognized as the finest private mineral collection ever assembled,” said John Sampson White, a curator at the Smithsonian Institute.

It includes gems of exceptional value, fossils, meteorites, and one of the world’s finest micromount collections. According to Doell, there are 35 sub-collections from every important location across the globe and rare pieces of historic or scientific importance including many from Canada.

Pinch’s Canadian collection includes over 1,000 specimens from Canada’s most famous occurrences including Mont-St-Hilaire, Que., Asbestos, Madoc, Bancroft, Cobalt, Great Bear Lake and Rapid Creek.

A geologist’s dream, it also boasts the world’s largest and best baricite crystal and one of the finest kainosite specimens in existence.

Other significant specimens are:

* The 17-carat O’Dunne Sapphire formerly owned by the Grand Duchess Cyril of Russia. Set in sterling silver with 24 Golcanda diamonds by Tavernier of Paris, it is appraised at over $300,000.

* The best collection of Russian minerals in the Western World including six diamond crystals in matrix, an exquisite mass of crystallized platinum and the world’s largest nugget of the rare mineral, tulameenite.

* A selected suite of 125 exotic minerals from Japan including some of the finest examples of axinite, scorodite, pyroxmangite and rhodonite.

“It’s likely that the Pinch collection is more significant then the Smithsonian which incorporates four famous private collections of great stature,” said Doell.

By combining it with Canada’s national mineral collection, Doell can give the Canadian collection a prominence in world terms which would otherwise have taken decades of painstaking work to achieve.

In a bid to bring the Pinch collection to Canada where he says it rightfully belongs, Doell has gathered some of the top names from Canadian mining and medicine to assist in the fund raising drive.

So far, the committee of trustees includes A. Powis, chairman of Noranda Inc., Bill Turner, chief executive of Consolidated Bathurst and Dr Phil Gold, chairman of the Department of Medicine at McGill University. First Refusal

The University of Texas had arranged to buy the collection. But after it was unable to fund the acquisition, Doell was offered first refusal through his connections with Pinch and a number of other North American collectors.

A lifelong mineral collector, Doell has known Pinch since 1973 and paid a number of visits to the basement of the gemologist’s home in Rochester where the collection is housed. “The whole basement is essentially a large mineral gallery,” said Doell, who learned that the collection was available at a Rochester mineral symposium in April, 1986.

After spending nearly 40 years assembling the collection, Doell says his friend has reached a point in life when he wants to cash in on a lifetime of mineral collecting.

“I have two kids and a wife and if anything happened to me they wouldn’t know what to do with the collection,” said Pinch. “If I’m still alive in three years, I would like to see the collection placed where it will be taken care of.”

While admitting that losing the collection will be a psychological setback, an honorary position as associate at the National Museum will give Pinch some say in the handling of his life’s work. Breakup value

“The collection is valued at $7 million but its breakup value makes it worth much more than the Canadians are paying,” said Pinch.

“Acquiring the right to purchase this collection amounts to something of a coup,” added Gibson. “A number of other institutions including the British Museum would love to have had it,” he said.

With an initial payment of $1.2 million(US) needed by June 1, Doell says the formal fund-raising drive will begin almost immediately. In an effort to meet that deadline, he plans to approach a number of prominent Canadian private sector companies and foundations.

Although the federal government donated $200,000 to buy the 3-year option on the collection, Doell hopes that it will eventually kick in $1 for every $1 raised from the private sector.

“Mining and minerals are fundamental to our development as a country, but we don’t have anything which symbolizes the importance of mining to our country,” said Doell.

“Given the importance of mining and minerals to the economy, we think that a lot of people would like to see us achieve what we have set out to do.”