Mixed Minerals!
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A great example of henmilite from a find made around 1994-95, I remember sitting at the computer as a broke 3rd grader reading about these on John Veevaert’s “Trinity Minerals” site marveling at the beautiful deep, inky purple blue on the contrasting white matrix. The story was that a local Japanese mineral club had stumbled upon them while on a collecting trip at a mine worked primarily for materials used in the manufacture of toothpaste.
At this point, 30 years later, they are quite rare and even
micros command somewhat high prices—this one has a group of crystals displaying
that distinctive inky purplish blue color sprinkled on a white matrix. Good
(and decently sizable) example of this rare borate!
Around 15-16 years ago, there was a massive discovery of world class cuprite crystals at the Rubtsovskoe Mine--they were a staple of the Russian dealers for a few years after the find-- though a couple years after the initial discovery of those more ubiquitous
cuprite crystals, these really interesting copper pseudomorphs after cuprite
were discovered, though they came out in much smaller numbers than the
cuprites.
This one is kind of an unusual combination piece-- there were a fair number of cuprite octahedrons on somewhat poorly formed, thickly branching copper, but there were very few combinations of cuprite with cuprite pseudos-- this one has an octahedron sitting on a cluster of octahedrons that have been totally replaced by dendritic copper.
Around 15-16 years ago, there was a massive discovery of world class cuprite crystals at the Rubtsovskoe Mine--they were a staple of the Russian dealers for a few years after the find-- though a couple years after the initial discovery of those more ubiquitous cuprite crystals, these really interesting copper pseudomorphs after cuprite were discovered, though they came out in much smaller numbers than the cuprites.
This one hosts a couple large octahedral pseuodos, the larger one a hopped octahedron approximately 2.6 cm on the diagonal, sitting on a mass of copper crystals, with just a little cuprite still remaining here and there.
A nice example of lorenzenite, from pretty much the only
location you are likely to see specimens.
This species is a reasonably rare sodium titanium silicate, it is
actually known from a handful of locations but at nearly all it just forms tiny
crystals that require strong magnification to appreciate, the main exception
being this pegmatite in a birch forest in a relatively remote part of northwestern
Russia.
I bought a batch of them just to keep, there were two that
stood out as reasonably good display specimens, at least as much as you could
hope for from this species, so I’m posting them here.
A nice example of lorenzenite, from pretty much the only location you are likely to see specimens. This species is a reasonably rare sodium titanium silicate, it is actually known from a handful of locations but at nearly all it just forms tiny crystals that require strong magnification to appreciate, the main exception being this pegmatite in a birch forest in a relatively remote part of northwestern Russia.
I bought a batch of them just to keep, there were two that stood out as reasonably good display specimens, at least as much as you could hope for from this species, so I’m posting them here. This one has a decently sized crystal standing nicely, the termination is buried a bit under the surrounding matrix material.
