Orpiment - Lucéram, Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

[www.mindat.org]

The right locality might not be Luceram, but Duranus.

Both sites are about 7km (straight line) from each other, and the contexts are very similar.
Orpiment is widely dominant in luceram, realgar remains very rare, and only can be found in very thin crystallizations.
In Duranus, realgar is dominant, showing centimetric crystals, although nice orpiment radiated groups can be found.
Compare the sample I self collected recently

[www.mindat.org]
[www.mindat.org]

Pascal

Message sent.

I bought this specimen in 1994 from Alain Carion. It comes from the collection of Jean Chervet and is accompanied by one of his labels, i.e. it is not a recent find and also was not back in 1994. So far, there was no reason to doubt the locality.

Well, it seems to definitely be Duranus...

I asked Jean Feraud, who did his doctorate these studying Luceram & Duranus metallogeny. (FERAUD J. (1974) : Les gisements de sulfures d'arsenic du sud-est de la France. Minéralisations liées aux strates et gîtes filoniens. Thèse doctorat spec. géologie appliquée, option gisements minéraux. Université de Paris IV)
(I'll add this reference in the localities datas)

He answered : "Tu as probablement raison, le facies est typique de Duranus, avec le calcaire argileux (marl) en hosting rock. Le peu d'orpi que j'ai vu dans les marnocalcaires de Luceram n'etait pas en gerbes de 2 cm ou plus comme celui de Chervet, mais en paillettes de qq mm dans des filets de calcite de un a trois mm de puissance (bien sur des masses plus grosses sont dans la glauconitite silicifiee grise ou verte)"

Translation :
You might probably be right. the habit is typical from Duranus, with clay-limestone (marl) hosting rock. The few orpiment I've seen in Luceram marl weren't in 2cm large (or more) sprays as this one from Chervet, but in small flakes, a few mm large only, included in small veins of calcite about 1 to 3 mm large.
(in Luceram) Larger masses of orpiment can be found in grey to greenish silicated glauconitite .

Pascal

The second and third pictures are most certainly from the Getchell Mine, Humboldt Co., Nevada and NOT France. Any thoughts?

The piece is mine, and I specified in the legend :

"N.B. : This piece is not self-collected, and the labelled locality "Luceram" remains doubtful to me, as I've never seen this habit in the site before"

I'm quite certain it's not Luceram. I'll soon do a photo of the hosting rock, if you can help determine the exact locality.

There's a bug here too : photos appears twice. they are parent and child images and the are duplicated (photo numbers are the same ones)

Regards

Pascal,

Merci. Je vais changer la localité.


Ryan,

Have you read the first post ? Perhaps, I should ask you why you didn't ...
The specimens in question were collected by Pascal himself.

I did read it, but the second specimen looks EXACTLY like a piece I sold on Ebay to a European buyer that was from the Getchell Mine, Humboldt Co., Nevada. I save all my pictures and I will see if I can dig it up.

Getchell certainly produced similar looking material, but Pascal collected these in France!!!

I think Pascal said;

"N.B. : "This piece is not self-collected", and the labelled locality "Luceram" remains doubtful to me, as I've never seen this habit in the site before"


But my picture records will tell.

My mistake, he was reffering to the first photo.

Ryan, maybe I'm mis-interpreting Pascal, but to me his "N.B......" referred to the piece Peter uploaded. Looking at my Getchell material, I see little resemblance in the matrix material to either Pascal's OR Peter's specimens. They don't look Getchell (to me.....)

Don

Ryan, you're a much faster typist than I am!!!

Don

I was talking about my other orpiment from Luceram I uploaded on mindat :

[www.mindat.org]
[www.mindat.org]
(the third one is self collected)

The samples from Duranus are self collected too, there are no doubt with the locality.

Thanks Peter (there might have been a mix with the labels of the Chervet Collection some time before...)

Pascal



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2012 05:38AM by Pascal Chollet.