Calcioancylite-(Ce) pseudomorph after Remondite with Aegirine (incredibly rare)

Item Description

The famous Poudrette Quarry (Demix Quarry) at Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, Canada is one of the world's most diverse and unique mineral localities. This complex nepheline-syenite / pegmatite locality has been the source of some of the most distinctive minerals ever seen. It's also one of the great localities for pseudomorph collectors, featuring replacements that aren't seen from any other localities. This piece is a notably rare example of grey Calcioancylite-(Ce) pseudomorphing after a prismatic crystal of Remondite, associated with little black crystals of Aegirine. I've only seen a select few of these over the years, and I found that there was a write up of this material in the July/August 2000 of the German mineral magazine, Lapis for reference. They were found in the late 1990s, and I was told that they all came from a single pocket. Fine quality and exceptionally rare. While this locality produced a large number of specimens for decades, collecting is now highly restricted, so very little is available on the market, and pieces like this are becoming hard to find, so don't miss out while they're still out there.
From the collection of Dr. Robert ("Bob") Byers of the San Francisco area. Bob is a spinal surgeon, who started collecting minerals as a boy when his father took him on geology field trips. Bob acquired this specimen from Frank and Wendy Melanson in 2009.