Calcite

Item Description

The historic and highly productive Idarado Mine in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado is one of the most well-known localities in the state. The unique name for this mine comes from the combination of the Idaho based Sunshine Mining Company and Newmont Mining in Colorado (IDA-ho + coloRADO = IDARADO). The Idarado was one of the great ore producers in all of the Colorado and the United States for that matter, rich in both precious metals and base metals. Some of the best and most well-known display specimens of minerals like Calcite came out of this mine. This particular piece is a show cabinet specimen featuring a pair of elongated tapered scalenohedral crystals of a gentle white hue, free of matrix. They are very good sized for the locality, measuring well over 4 inches, and they're in fine condition to boot, with no major damage I can find. Complete on all sides, and a very worthwhile example of these now hard to find specimens from this iconic mine.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 14.1.1.1 CO.17; 9941. 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