Aragonite (''floater'' specimen - 2023 find)

Item Description

A beautiful Aragonite specimen from the new discovery (2023) at this classic locality, which happens to be the type locality for the species. For reference, according to mindat.org, Aragonite was named, "for the type locality, the village of Molina de Aragón, Spain, and not the province of Aragón, a mistake made by several later writers". So the history of this species is directly tied Spanish localities. Chemically, Aragonite is calcium carbonate, like Calcite, but it forms at a lower temperature and the crystals are orthorhombic, not trigonal. A good amount of the Aragonite specimens found in various world localities are white, grey or colorless, but the pieces from around the city of Cuenca in the mountains of east-central Spain can often show a rare PURPLE color. This piece is a beautiful example of these historic and well-known specimens featuring a sharp, lustrous, translucent pseudo-hexagonal, cyclic twinned group of crystals of Aragonite showing a combination of smoky-golden hues and gorgeous saturated purple tones mixed throughout. The piece is a complete "floater", crystallized all around with no point of attachment or any damage that I can see. There is no iron oxide staining or inclusions, it's clean and beautiful. We picked up a very small parcel of these specimens, and only have a few to offer in the auctions going forward, so don't miss out as we don't know when pieces of this quality and color will be found again.