About Us

Dakota Matrix Minerals, Inc.

Dakota Matrix was founded in 1996 and has offered systematic and rare mineral specimens online since 1998. In 2012 we incorporated. All of our sales are generated exclusively through this website dakotamatrix.com and operated from Rapid City, South Dakota by Tom and Lori Loomis. At this time we do not have a showroom.

Our philosophy is simple: Help our customers build collections.

Collections are built by finding, trading or buying mineral specimens. Our part in your endeavor is to supply you with a wide range of specimens from locality pieces to choice quality specimens at affordable prices.  With this in mind, the Dakota Matrix website was built to provide our customers with the ultimate mineral collecting experience at your finger tips. Our inventory is extensive, deep, and heavy in species with approximately 75,000 pieces from hundreds of localites worldwide. Please visit our Rare Mineral Specimen galleries, as well as our Over $50 Mineral Gallery and Under $50 Mineral Gallery. You might also be interested in our MineralPedia, online photo database of mineral specimens from worldwide localities. If you cannot find the mineral specimen you are looking for, please use our Search facility.

Our work is not all on the web and commercial. Our specialty is researching Black Hills minerals, and through our efforts we have made several contributions to science.  We operate the famous Tip Top mine near Custer, where we discovered the new mineral species Jahnsite (NaFeMg). With our partner Dr. Buford Nichols, we will undoubtably increase the knowledge base of this important pegmatite as more species are collected and studied. Several mineral species new to South Dakota were the direct result of our field work and have been documented in mineral publications including, Mineral News, Mineralogical Record, and Matrix Magazine. Over the years, we have been proud to host several touring groups including several Russian mineralogists, USD Geology students, U of Tennessee, and more. In 1996, Tom re-discovered the Ross Hannibal sincosite deposit, the best Sincosite ever found. Most recently, our field work resulted in the discovery of a new vanadium mineral called Phosphovanadylite-(Ca) and a second sincosite deposit from the phosphate mines in eastern Idaho.

Community outreach and support is also important to us at Dakota Matrix. We volunteer our time, expertise, and resources at the local science museums including the Museum of Geology and The Journey Museum here in Rapid City.  We, in turn, benefit from the generous support from other professionals in the mineral community, namely Dr. A. Kampf and Dr. Igor Pekov. Without their help, we could not have had many of our minerals described.

Tom Loomis

Tom holds a degree in Geological Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and worked as a geologist and mining engineer in South Dakota, Wyoming,  Nevada, and Mexico for over 18 years. Like many in the business, Tom has collected and studied minerals since he was eight years old. He had the pleasure of studying mineralogy under Bill Roberts at the School of Mines. His private systematic collection is extensive as is his Black Hills collection, which rivals most others.

Please visit Tom’s LinkedIn page for more information.