Copper (unusual style for Bisbee)

Item Description

This specimen is a solid "nest" of elongated copper crystals that together forms a cluster of intergrown wires, dense and solid. It is not fragile, although it looks so. The piece is fairly hefty at just under 300 grams, and significant for the size of a copper of this style from Bisbee. For what it is worth, it is surprising to realize that such a productive and important copper mine as Bisbee, the greatest copper mine in the world for some years in the early 1900s, actually produced very little of specimen-worthy native copper! Most copper here was tied up in the ores, and in secondary minerals. So, for collectors, it is actually quite difficult to get good Bisbee coppers even though it produced copper by the millions of tonnes over the years, commercially. An old specimen from a previous collection of Al and Ruth Keen, and then into the Rice Museum.