Native Bismuth

Is this manmade? It is supposed to be from the Pöhla Mine, Erzgebirge, Saxony, Germany and is a thumbnail size specimen.

It looks like the classic smelter product to me. What does the back look like - any associates?

Regards,
Ralph

The specimen does not belong to me and I don't know what the back looks like, but it sure looks like the manmade stuff you see all over the place, just a little oxidized and beaten up.

I agree it's not natural. Doesn't look like the same morphology as any natural bismuth that I have encountered. Or maybe it's a Borg coprolite.

These threads inspired me to go through all Mindat's native bismuth photos, and I find that the majority of specimens described as "crystals" are really cleavages or casts! The few real crystals (mostly from Germany) are generally very ugly. Beautiful crystals are smelter products, like this 16th century example in the Vienna museum: [www.mindat.org] - I've seen very similar-looking growths in Bolivian smelters in the 1990s and, although bismuth is a surprisingly abundant element mineral in Bolivia, I've never seen even the slightest hint of any open vug with crystals, not even a tiny ugly one, so the chances of this specimen being a natural crystal group and not an ancient smelter product are close to nil.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2011 02:17AM by Alfredo Petrov.

I agree it looks like a manmade product, but there is a drawing of such a 'Bi-crystal' in Goldschmidt.

Erik, I would not be surprised if people were trying to sell smelter-made crystals back in Goldschmidts days too!

Regards,
Ralph

Ralph,

I agree with you and I just checked the figure in Goldschmidt: a group of 'hopperXX' without matrix, making it suspicious.

[www.mindat.org] is a 16th century silver, not bismuth. Fixed.