Brazilianite on Albite

Item Description

Brazilianite is the namesake species for the country in which it was first discovered in the 1940s. To this day, the finest examples of this uncommon phosphate are those from Brazil. This piece is a fine quality and showy small cabinet specimen featuring a beautiful, sharp, lustrous, translucent, prismatic, yellow green color crystal of Brazilianite surrounded by crystals of white Albite and bit of gem quality colorless Quartz on the back. The Brazilianite measures 4.2 cm, and is in good shape, despite a decent sized contact on the side of the prism. It's not easy to find Brazilianite crystals of this size on the market, especially matrix pieces, so I still value it for that fact. This piece comes from the personal collection of Colorado mining legend, Dave Bergman, the maternal grandfather of Brian Kosnar. Dave is now retired from mining, but he worked for decades in various mines underground in Colorado, as a miner, mechanic, engineer, shift boss and foreman. His biggest claim to fame is that he was the foreman and the primary person in charge of mining and specimen recovery at the Sweet Home Mine in Colorado in the 1970s alongside his son-in-law, Rich Kosnar. This project what was the FIRST ever operation for specimen recovery at this historic locality. A full-page photograph of Dave can be seen mining underground at the Sweet Home in on page 58 of Peter Bancroft's book "Gem and Crystal Treasures".