Baryte (gemmy crystals)

Item Description

In the western part of Colorado (outside of Grand Junction) lies the Book Cliffs area, a famous locality that has been a source of some outstanding quality crystals of colorless GEM Baryte. These impressive and well-known specimens are truly some of the finest examples of the species from Colorado or almost any other U. S. locality. The supreme gem clarity and combined with the colorless purity and excellent form of the crystals makes them very eye-catching and desirable. The crystals are rarely seen on matrix, as they form inside Mancos Shale concretions, that are broken open to reveal the crystals inside, and since Baryte has perfect cleavage, they often "pop" off the matrix when the concretions broken apart. This beautiful miniature specimen features a few VERY gemmy, razor-sharp, lustrous, colorless orthorhombic prisms of Baryte, measuring up to 3.5 cm, on matrix. Most people don't realize that only a small percentage of the Barytes from this locality reach this quality, and most of these concretions do not host fine quality crystals, and water-clear specimens are not common on the market these days. Good overall condition, I can see one small nick, on one edge of the prism on the main crystal. This piece was originally part of the collection of Donald Fluck.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 29.3.1.1 CO.9; 3306. 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