Gail's NEW favourite of the day, PART 2

Really nice Steve..
After about fifty pictures I finally got a some good shots of this fluorescent Norbergite and Diopside. 2-1/4 inch Norbergite flower, six inches overall.
SW UV

I have always liked the matte finish on this pyrite from Butte, Montana. The crystals are combinations of first and second order octahedrons, cube, pyritohedron and maybe the diploid. 7x3x4.5 cm.



Cheers!

Steve

This is my favorite of the day. I newly acquired Fluorite from Riemvasmaak. I really love the color of this piece and think it goes well with the photo of the terrain. I could not find a picture of the Mine, so I used this instead. Just a little project I've been working on this past week, making photo collages of my collection with photos of the locations.

Really nice photos of fabulous minerals everyone!
Here is my favourite of the day. And this is the mine, and mineral, that enticed me into being a mineral collector.



Gail Patricia Copus Spann

That is a fantasmic Wulfenite!!

To go along with Gail's San Francisco Mine wulfenite; this is one I picked up through a deaccession sale at a museum several years ago. It measures about 14 cm tall!!

Paul, that's a beauty! And thanks, Conrad, just got it last night and love it.

Gail Patricia Copus Spann

Beautiful and interesting specimens one and all! Thank you for posting.

Gail, that is a stunning classic. Congrats!

Paul that is a huge piece! Very commanding.

Keeping with wulfenite, this specimen caught my interest due to the classic location and the contrasting colours which give it a rather wild flavour. The black druse would seem to be a manganese oxide but the back of the specimen shows some curious black blebs. This was collected by the Spirifer team in 2010 and not many specimens survived the dig due to the extremely friable matrix, so I feel lucky to have obtained this one.

Wulfenite on limestone with unknown manganese mineral
Union Mine, Mežica (Miess), Slovenia
approx 2.5 cm x 2.2cm

Today's favorite is quartz and pyrite from Washington. 12.1 x 8.2 cm.

© A&M

AM Mizunaka Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Today's favorite is quartz and pyrite from
> Washington. 12.1 x 8.2 cm.
>
Wow!! That's a great piece Mike!

Thanks Bob. Your Arizona galena and quartz piece is really nice.


Bob Griffis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> AM Mizunaka Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Today's favorite is quartz and pyrite from
> > Washington. 12.1 x 8.2 cm.
> >
> Wow!! That's a great piece Mike!

Hi,

Since AM posted a photo of that beautiful pyrite from Washington, I thought I would offer one of its relatives.

Pyrite on Quartz crystal. 4 cm by 8 cm. Pyrite crystal is 2.5 cm by 3 cm (7 corners of the crystal are visible).Joseph Polityka collection from M. Phantom Minerals (Neal and Chris Pfaff). Neal Pfaff collected this specimen. Please see the book American Mineral Treasures for an article on the site and for a photo of Neal Pfaff. The Pfaffs retired from the mineral business in 2000.


Best wishes,

Joe

I really like this one! Sellaite is a rare mineral, particularly as good crystallised examples, and twinning is not that common. This specimen exhibits twinning typical of other tetragonal species. And it's from my favourite collecting site!


Regards
Steve

Hi all,

Very nice favorites as usual, thank for shearing.

Stephanie, your unknown manganese mineral could be a zinc mineral, schalenblende.
It seems that the glubules are build up by different layers of the mineral. To my knowledge, manganse minerals are just sooty black all the way thru and not banded like yours. Check with this photo. Schalenblende come in a variety of shades going from light beige to dark brown. My specimen is from the lighter variety du to less iron content.
Let your piece checked and you will be surprised. Guarantee !
Schalenblende is much rarer than oridinary manganes oxides.

[www.mindat.org]

I hope this helps.

Take care and best regards.

Paul.

Paul, thank you for your observations! Yes the banding around some of the black blebs on the Mezica wulfenite piece made me also suspect it could be more than just the manganese oxides and the beginnings of schalenblende was my first thought as well. Very interesting that you suggested it.

Very nice specimen Paul, always find your photos to be fabulous. Thank you too, for sharing.

cheers,
stephanie

Most everyone has heard of the abundant collectible celestine from the Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan quarries like Clay Center and Holloway, Michigan, but collectible celestine also occurs in Indiana geodes. These 3 examples are related and my favorites, not only of this day, but in my geode collection as a whole. There are 2 quarries where they are found. Example 1 is from Lehigh Portland Cement Quarry in Lawrence County, Indiana. This is the old deep quarry, now extinct and filled with water; the current quarry is shallow with only a few poor quality colorless specimens. Examples 2 and 3 are from Salem Quarry in Washington County. This quarry still occasionally produces good specimens, but the best ones came out in the 1960s thru 1980s. An article on this quarry and it's celestine appeared in MinRec about 1981 or 1983 (?). Specimen 1 8 cm x 4.5 cm with the xtal 2.5 cm x 1.5 cm. Specimen 2 8 cm x 5.2 cm with the xtal 3 cm x 2.3 cm. Specimen 3 8.5 cm x 5.2 cm with the xtals about 3.5 cm x 1.8 cm.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2012 04:41PM by BOB HARMAN.

Bob,

Love seeing the Indiana celestites! Especially the Lehigh Portland Cememt Company quarry specimens.

My only collecting there was in the summer of 1966 shortly after the quarry had been closed and flooding was essentially at the level of the most productive geode/celestite zone. We had this information from some source, I don't remember who, and decided to organize a trip. There were three of us, maybe four, I can't remember if Dave Hess was along, including Lloyd Tate, Mel Dyke and myself. We parked on the gravel road north of the quarry and climbed up the the edge of the pit on the east side where there was a slope of spoil that we could clamber down into the north end of the main pit. The south end of the quarry had been mined to a lower level, but the north end, over an area of perhaps two acres, had been mined down to the top of the best geode zone. It was probably a natural, shaley break in the quality of the limestone and a logical place for the floor of a bench. The rocks there have a very shallow dip and while the south end of the pit was deeply flooded the north end was dry and the rock surface sloped gently into the advancing water.

We spent a hot 4-5 hours digging geodes and had about as many as we could carry when we finished. Many were taken whole to be opened later as a very high percentage of these contained celestite. My favorite memory of the trip is of reaching to arms length into a blast-generated crack that was entirely below water and feeling for open geodes on the rock surfaces. In one large geode opening I found three large, perfect floater crystals, one of which had a sharp marcasite phantom. When we reached the top of the rubble slope on the way out of the quarry there was a local farmer waiting for us, clearly curious about some nutty Bloomington guys working so hard on a hot day.

A couple of days later we all met a Mel's to open geodes and divide up the spoils. I think we destroyed his carpet, and, as I recall, Lloyd had collected something that the rest of us had avoided, a marvelous sunburn!

A great time was had by all.

Attached are pictures of the last of the three large, floater crystals mentioned above that I still have. 6x3.5x4 cm. Minor sugary quartz and yellow calcite attached.


Front view; shows hint of marcasite phantom.


Back view.


And another geode with a clear, 3 cm crystal in typical sugary quartz and yellow calcite geode matrix. Overall 9X5x4 cm.


Cheers!

Steve



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2012 08:04PM by Stephen Rose.

Hey Steve Rose,
Nice calsite crystal.great story of self-collecting Do you still have the crystal?
Peace,sam

Hey Sam,

I'll show it to you the next time you come over. Why don't you post a picture of that giant scepter that you found the other day?

Cheers!

Steve

Blue phantom Cave in rock,illlinois fluorite on quartz