Botryogen from Redington Mine?

Hi,
a friend of mine has this specimen labelled as Botryogen from Redington Mine, California, USA. Size is 10x10x6 cm and was bought at a mineral show in Germany ten years ago.
Can anyone tell me if the specimen could be from Redington and can anyone tell me what it's approximately worth?




Best regards
Philip

I have a reservation as to the natural origin of this specimen. It could be a lab-grown sulphate or chromate.

If this is natural Botryogen, it's a BEAUTIFUL specimen!

Lefteris.

Sadly I agree with Lefteris, it's 99.99% man-made.


This is a natural botryogen from that mine: [www.mindat.org]

I know Botryogen as crusts from Gosslar, so I was shocked at Philip's specimen. My first thought was some kind of fake, so i looked at the Botryogen gallery and to my surprise found visible xls!!! Thanks for the education!!! However this looks to good to be true, check the symmetry.

Looks atypical compared to other "good" specimens I have seen from the Redington as it seems the crystals are more opaque, brighter orange and on a firm matrix. The pieces I've seen are more amber to orange-brown in color, more translucent and are often free of matrix or on an earthy/powdery yellow Fe-sulfate mineral matrix.

It could be Botryogen from the Redington, however, but the mine is long gone and anything that was collected came out in the 1920s or 1930s. See [www.minsocam.org] for some additional background and associated minerals. Alos take a look at the piece that is up on the RRUFF project site here: [rruff.info]

Cheers from NorCal, John

"God gave me the stubbornness of a mule and a fairly keen scent." - Einstein