Microcline - Franklin Mine, Franklin, Franklin Mining District, Sussex Co., New Jersey, USA

This is a very beautiful amazonite crystal. However, the specimen appears to be the same as this one.

Colors are different, and I think the photo with the green crystal (this page) is much better.

Also microcline and amazonite are not listed from the Franklin Mine. These species should be added to the list, if this is the correct locality.

Thanks

Peter



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2012 10:33PM by Peter Cristofono.

The amazonite variety of microcline came out of the Buckwheat open pit and the Trotter Mine, especially from the latter, where the Two Rock pegmatite intruded the ore body and partially melted the pre-existing ore minerals. It is correctly listed under those 2 locality files. The label attributing this specimen to the "Franklin Mine" is technically incorrect (overly simplistic). It most probably came from the Trotter Mine where the large crystals of rhodonite, willemite, some microcline (vast majority of microcline/amazonite was massive), and andradite garnet were found in the margins of the pegmatite intrusion. The 1st. photo is more accurate since the second one has a strong blue shift in the white range.

Hi Peter, the date of this photo is important, 1972. When Rock was taking these pictures there was only film and not all film or slides after 40 years remain true to color. Time unfortunately has degraded the color integrity of Rocks photo. The blue-green color of the microcline in the first photo is quite accurate and if the specimen had been cleaned better before the photo I think it would have looked even better. The one thing you will note is that the microcline had room to grow in the calcite of this specimen. Chet mentioned that most of what is found today is massive and if you look at the double rock pegmatite that remains there is not a lot of calcite evident so getting nice euhedral crystals is still an uncommon event. Looking for the contact zones has been a good strategy in Franklin, NJ field collecting whether on the dumps or in the mines and quarries of the area. By the way there are a number of specimens with more saturated blue color that can be just like robins-egg blue but this particular crystal has the great crystal morphology, pleasing color and nicely isolated and framed in the specimen.
Good observations Peter.
Steve.

Thanks Chet and Steve.

Steve, I hadn't noticed the 1972 date. Thanks for pointing that out, it does make a difference.

It's nice to have both a historical photo and a recent photo of this outstanding Franklin specimen.

Is there a way that these two photos can be linked together, since they are of the same specimen?

This is not much to look at, but I am very curious if anyone recognizes the style of the mounting base and could help identify the collection it might have come from. I have several of these which came from a hodge podge collection I bought a few years back.

Thanks for ANY help.

Bart

Bart,

You need to create a new thread for this. Put it under Itentity Help.