Baryte (rare German locality)

Item Description

A gorgeous and fine quality specimen labeled as coming from the Zeche Recklinghausen (Recklinghausen Mine). It is the ONLY Baryte I have seen from this locality, and after a search on mindat, I couldn't find another example for comparison, so you know it's rare. A pair of very well-formed, sharp, translucent crystals with a silvery/smoky interior and GLASSY terminations measuring up to 3.7 cm are preferentially coated by sparkling metallic golden Marcasite, with an attractive white scalenohedron of Calcite sitting in the center, sitting on additional smaller Barytes and minor matrix. The piece is in good shape, but there are a couple little nicks to the main Baryte crystals, so it's not pristine. It's still very good quality, and the rare locality makes it very desirable, so if you collect Baryte or minerals of Germany, this is something that would fill a spot in your collection.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#573 D), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection over the next two to three years through our various platforms.