Calcite on Fluorite

Item Description

The Minerva No. 1 Mine in Southern Illinois is famous for its beautiful multi-color Fluorites, but it has also produced some wonderful Calcite specimens, and this piece is a very distinctive example from this famous mine. This piece is full-sized cabinet display specimen featuring rather compressed groups of rhombic Calcite of a light golden hue, which are tightly intergrown and slightly "curved" to create "rosette"-shaped aggregates measuring to about 2.7 cm, beautifully sitting atop a matrix of Bitumen-coated Fluorite cubes. What really makes the piece so impressive is that all of the Calcite groups are in amazingly fine shape, with no major damage and honestly I don't see and real damage at all with the naked eye. The piece almost reminds one of a hedgehog, and it's a really fine example of this specific material. The piece was originally in the collection of Roy Smith, who assembled a great collection of Southern Illinois specimens. Valued $2,500
Ex George Loud Collection No. 14.1.1.1 IL.37 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