This is basically simplifying my quick-sell station idea by removing the middle-man, but the implications are different enough that it should have its own topic. The current issue is that the mineral deposits by people who care about gate composition are made insignificant by the deposits by those who don't. Those people only gather minerals for the crown reward, so they go for whichever fragment's biggest. How about we remove the crown reward and boost the overall crown drop rates slightly to compensate?

Pros:
— If the only reason to gather minerals is to influence gates, then only the people that care will be depositing minerals.
— The people that don't care about gates don't have to bother collecting and selling minerals just for the crowns.
— Minerals stand out in the Clockworks; new players will notice them. If people stop thinking of them simply as crown sources, It'll get more people interested in gate construction.

Cons:
— The flavor of everyone working together to open up new gates gets weakened.
— Minerals are interesting, even if you're not interested in gates. Finding a stash of minerals feels more important than finding some crowns lying around, and finding a huge fragment to replace a medium one feels much more special than the 10-crown difference warrants. If I don't care about gates, I lose this bit of excitement.
— Doesn't play well with boosting. The current system hardly ever gets used, but a tweaked version or replacement might come along. If there is a payoff for boosted minerals, then we're back to everyone collecting minerals just for the crowns.