Acanthite (fine crystals)

Item Description

A fine quality and very attractive miniature specimen of Acanthite from the Hongda Mine, which is perhaps the most famous silver mine in China. While this locality has produced some of, if not the finest Silver specimens from any locality in Asia, it doesn't get enough credit for the world-class Acanthites that have come out. This piece has excellent crystal form featuring rather large, sharp, well-formed individual crystals of dark gun-metal grey Acanthite with smooth faces in spots, and skeletal or "hoppered" forms in other places. There is no matrix, and the piece is nearly a complete "floater", as it's crystallized most of the way around, but there are some small points of attachment on the base, so not 100% crystallized all over. It's quite rare to find crystals of Acanthite this size from anywhere, and nothing has come out of the Hongda Mine in a while, so it's quite likely that these pieces will never be seen again. If you missed out on these when they first hit the market, this is a fantastic opportunity to pick up something that is rarely available on for sale, especially in such a super quality example. As an aside, you might see a fair number of people label these specimens (and Acanthite in general) as "Argentite" or pseudomorphs after Argentite, but this is not correct because Argentite cannot exist at our current atmospheric pressure below 177° Celsius, so all of these silver sulfide specimens are technically paramorphs of Acanthite. This piece was priced at $4,000 retail in our inventory.