Every stone we at UP8 list comes with a short provenance record. It is deliberately plain. Its job is to tell you where a piece came from in words that will survive a question, and nothing more. Here is how to read one.
Photo: UP8 specimen photo.
The specimen code
Each specimen carries a code such as UP8-OLI-008. The middle letters are the area: PEN for the Highway 97 roadside cut at Penticton, SKA for the Skaha Lake corridor, OLI for the Highway 97 roadcuts along the Similkameen River pathway at Oliver. The number is simply the order the piece was logged in.
The public place and land status
The record names a public place, such as a roadside cut, and says what kind of ground it is. For our current areas that line reads as a roadside cutout or a public roadcut / pathway margin, and it says plainly that the place is not a staked claim. We name the place in those terms because that is the honest description of where the stone was picked up.
The licence line
You will see a Free Miner Certificate (FMC) number and its status. UP8's founder holds a Free Miner Certificate in British Columbia. That certificate is the standing that lets a person seek mineral and placer rights and do limited exploration. It is not a mine permit, not a claim, and not proof that every piece in the shop came from the field. We show it so you can see the standing behind the collecting, not as a badge.
Photo: UP8 specimen photo.
What a record will never say
Some things never go on a card: the names of mines, grade figures for gold or silver, or the phrase "from the mine." Neighbourhood geology stays in our own ledger. A provenance record is provenance, not a mine tour.
Where to look
The full area register lives on our Provenance page, and every logged specimen with a photo is in the Minerals cabinet. If a line on a record raises a question, write to us at customer_service@uniqueperspective8.com.
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