My 10-year-old son is obsessed with minerals. I built him a database to fuel the obsession - roast it
My son Jacopo (10) discovered minerals about a year ago and it completely took over. He carries specimens to school, corrects his teachers on crystal systems, and his birthday list is entirely Mindat wishlist items.
I'm not a geologist - I'm a marketing consultant. But I wanted to do something with him that was actually his, not just buying him stuff. So over the past few months we built a mineralogy database together: he picks what to include, tests if the descriptions make sense to a 10-year-old, and approves the photos. I handle the technical side.
The site is called "minerito" (not trying to promote, genuinely asking for feedback from people who actually know this stuff) - bilingual Italian/English, scientific cards with three depth levels (we call them Essential, In-depth, Technical). We're at 109 minerals so far.
What I'd love from this community:
- Are the scientific descriptions accurate? We used AI + sources like Mindat and GIA but I genuinely can't verify the harder stuff
- What important minerals are we missing that a serious collector would expect?
- Is the depth level concept useful or annoying?
- What would make a site like this actually valuable to you vs just going to Mindat?
Jacopo specifically asked me to ask about fossils and meteorites, we added those categories recently and he's convinced meteorites are "cooler than gems." He may be right.