Baryte (doubly-terminated)

Item Description

A nice small cabinet specimen from the Linwood Mine in Iowa. These specimens are distinctive for their unique "silvery" colored Baryte crystals. This piece features good sized, sharp, lustrous, translucent doubly-terminated crystal with the iconic thick prism and "chisel"-shaped terminations. Additional smaller Barytes can be seen scattered over the underlying matrix. The eye-catching color of the crystals is singular, and truly does not resemble any Barytes we've seen from any other locality. The specimen is in good condition with only one contact on the back of the main crystal's upper termination where it was removed from the pocket wall.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.