Aegirine (formerly Acmite) (rare locality specimen) (ex David Burgess Collection)

Item Description

This piece comes with two dealer labels that state it is "Acmite", but the species was discredited in 1988, and now all "Acmites" are Aegirine. Originally Acmite was thought to be an Amphibole species, and didn't even belong to the Pyroxene group like Aegirine. Later it was determined that Acmite was a Pyroxene, but then only a variety of Aegirine. With that said, one rarely sees crystals of Aegirine from the Narssârssuk pegmatite in Denmark, and this thumbnail sized crystal is a good, sharp, euhedral example with smooth lustrous prism faces and a somewhat etched "chisel-shaped" termination. It's good quality for what it is, and honestly this might be the very first example of the material that we've had to offer in the auctions, as I can't remember another one. A cool piece from this classic nepheline syenite pegmatite in Greenland which is the actually the type locality for 13 species. From the worldwide collection of David Burgess (1951-2016). David was a prolific species collector from Newington, Connecticut, and the namesake for the extremely rare cobalt arsenate species Burgessite, which he discovered.