Cassiterite (RARE locality specimen) (ex Chet Lemanski Collection)

Item Description

While pegmatitic Cassiterite isn't unheard of, you don't see specimen of this size or heft from Maine very often. Typically the Cassiterite crystals from various quarries in Oxford County (along with Androscoggin County) are only a few mm (though I have seen larger individual "chunks" from time to time), but this piece is a notably big robust specimen featuring large, crude, brown-black colored Cassiterite associated with bladed, silvery colored Muscovite, and minor Quartz and Feldspar. The piece weighs a whopping 1,300 grams (nearly 3 pounds), so it's almost pure Cassiterite. We've never had a crumb of Cassiterite to offer from the B.B. No. 7 Quarry before this piece, and it is certainly bigger than probably all of the combined Cassiterites we've had to offer from Maine put together. From the collection of Chester ("Chet") S. Lemanski Jr. of Browns Mills, New Jersey (https://www.mindat.org/user-461.html). Collection #21923CL. Chet was born 1947 in started collecting minerals circa 1957. He worked briefly as a drill runner at the famous Sterling Mine, in Ogdensburg, New Jersey and from 1987 to 1990 he helped convert the mine into a public access mining museum. He has held the role of treasurer, vice president and president of the Franklin-Ogdensburg Mineralogical Society (FOMS), and has been a board member and vice president of the Franklin Mineral Museum. The rare copper arsenate, Lemanskiite was named in his honor in 1999.