Donate Rock and Mineral Raffles

What types of Rock & Minerals?

We are always in search of specimens for our Rock and Mineral Raffles, and there are plenty of nice specimens out there looking for a good home. Search your collection for duplicates, call your local rock and mineral club, and call the geology department of your local college or university for donations. Don’t worry if your specimens are "common" since common is a relative term. Participants in the Rock and Mineral Raffle come from around the country including locations where hard-rock bedrock cannot be found and have little in the way of sedimentary formations. Educators are always looking for quality hand samples for their students. If you are donating, please be sure that you label each specimen with what is known about it such as the identity, its origin, who collected it, uses, etc.

Rock and Mineral Raffles are also billed as a give-away. If you have samples that you think educators would enjoy having for their classrooms, please send those as well. In the past we have given away sand samples and state-stones, books, maps, and other resources that are likely to be useful to Earth and Space Science teachers. If you do have items for the give-away please provide proper identification 

 Specimen Labels

How to Ship?

There are a couple of different ways to get the samples to NESTA for the Rock and Mineral Raffles

1. Carry samples to the conference (if a very small number of specimens)

2. Ship to one of our designated receivers. Contact our Rock and Mineral Raffle Coordinator, Parker Pennington IV at p.o.pennington@gmail.com before mailing a donation. The USPS has flat rate Priority Boxes (2-3 days delivery), "Any weight (up to 70 pounds), any State." This allows to send more. The boxes are free from your post office

NESTA arranges for a local person to receive your shipment (the "receiver" mentioned above) and see that the raffle specimens arrive safely at the NESTA Rock Raffle.  Be sure to allow enough time for shipping. If you are personally bringing the specimens to the conference please contact one of our Rock and Mineral Coordinators (e-mails above) to arrange on site delivery.