Calcite (excellent pedigree!)

Item Description

Here we have an elusive Calcite specimen from the I-691 and Route 10 Interchange Roadcut from the 1980s. These pieces are incredibly rare on the market, and certainly are desirable for New England collectors for the obscure locality. This piece is a fine miniature featuring sharp, well-formed, gemmy/translucent, nearly colorless scalenohedral crystals measuring up to 2.0 cm sitting on diabase matrix. Some of the Calcites have a bit of iron inclusions, giving them a slightly reddish hue in spots. The crystals fluoresce a brilliant red hue under UV light! It should noted on a couple of the labels accompanying the piece that the Calcites are twinned, but I looked closely, and I don't see a shared plane of twinning, and I think they are simply two intergrown crystals. Very little damage and the piece displays nicely as you can see from the photos/video. If the rare locality wasn't enough, this piece has excellent pedigree dating back to Dr. Frederick Pough, who was one of the greatest American mineralogist of the 20th century. You can read his bio here ( https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/poughfrederick-h/ ). Fred's label states that the specimen was collected in 1984. The piece then went to the collection of Gene and Doris Wright, and eventually ended up in the collection of our own Alex Venzke (#104.19), a member of the leadership team of the Young Mineral Collectors group, a member of the mindat.org management team, a board member for the national Friends of Mineralogy organization, a board member for the Mineralogical Society of the District of Columbia, and co-founder and current Vice President of the Friends of Mineralogy Virginia Chapter.