Ankerite with Sodalite

Item Description

Cerro Sapo is not your typical Bolivian locality, as it's a carbonatite, not an ore locality. It is best known for its beautiful blue Sodalite, which famously made its way through the Incan Empire in the form of polished beads. This piece is a notably hard to find example of Ankerite, with an odd pale greenish color (a rare hue for the species), coated with sparkly druse of Harmotome in a matrix of blue Sodalite. The Ankerites show good rhombic form, and measure up to 7 mm across. A rather hard to find specimen from this lesser-known alkaline locality in the Andes.
From the collection of Chester ("Chet") S. Lemanski Jr. of Browns Mills, New Jersey (https://www.mindat.org/user-461.html). Collection #21544CL (obtained from Alfredo Petrov). Chet's collection catalogue states that he acquired this piece in May of 1986 from a "hippy dealer" at the Hackensack Show. Chet was born 1947 in started collecting minerals circa 1957. He worked briefly as a drill runner at the famous Sterling Mine, in Ogdensburg, New Jersey and from 1987 to 1990 he helped convert the mine into a public access mining museum. He has held the role of treasurer, vice president and president of the Franklin-Ogdensburg Mineralogical Society (FOMS), and has been a board member and vice president of the Franklin Mineral Museum. The rare copper arsenate, Lemanskiite was named in his honor in 1999.