Baryte (gemmy crystal)

Item Description

A beautiful cabinet sized piece from the 2014 discovery at the Linwood Mine in Iowa. These specimens are certainly some of the most distinct and beautiful examples of Baryte from any Midwest US locality. This particular piece is a wonderful and classic example of "silvery" colored crystals that have been on the market for about a decade now. This piece shows truly excellent form for the species and the locality, featuring a predominant large, sharp, lustrous, GEMMY crystal with the iconic thick prism and "chisel"-shaped termination, sitting on matrix. The crystal has a slight amount of etching, giving it a gentle ethereal appearance in spots. The color of this material is singular, and truly does not resemble any Barytes we've seen from any other locality. The specimen is in remarkably fine condition with no major damage I can find.
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.