Baryte

Item Description

A beautiful "fan"-shaped group of very light blue and white colored bladed Baryte, free of matrix from the famous Minerva No. 1 Mine in Hardin County, Illinois. Nearly every crystal on the specimen is undamaged, I can only see a few small nicks, but it's largely damage-free. The piece also sits beautifully on its own without the aid of a base or clay, and is fine quality for the material. The piece was formerly in the collection of Dr. Steve Neely, and is a great display piece from this famous Southern Illinois locality.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 38.3.1.1 IL.36; 4716 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