Baryte

Item Description

A beautiful, big, showy Baryte specimen from the Minerva No. 1 Mine in Illinois featuring attractive snow-white crystals measuring up to 2.8 cm, in a semi-stalactitic formation, with very minor attached matrix on the back. The crystals range from nearly opaque to gemmy/translucent in areas, and the habits vary from thinner blades to thicker more robust crystal form. Nearly all of the crystals are undamaged, and the piece displays quite nicely as you can see from the video. These particular white Barytes are seldom seen in such eye-catching big display pieces like this. Formerly in the collections of Roy Smith and Bud Poulin.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 28.3.1.1 IL.50; 9204 George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/george-loud for more information