Crocoite (excellent thumbnail)

Item Description

There is no debate that the finest crystals of Crocoite ever found are those from the famed Red Lead Mine in Tasmania, Australia. These phenomenal piece are world-famous for having the largest and highest quality crystals of the species with the finest color ever seen. It's rare to find good quality thumbnails of this material, especially matrix specimens, and this piece is a fantastic and showy example featuring diverging crystals of sharp, lustrous, strong orange-red colored, prismatic crystals measuring up to 1.7 cm aesthetically sitting on minor matrix. The crystals have a fiery internal vibrancy that really comes out when the piece is backlit. Great condition all around, maybe a few TINY imperfections, but the piece is largely damage free, and so showy! The crystals on this piece are a bit thicker than most Crocoites you'll see, and these are certainly gemmy, which is just another quality of the piece that makes it such a fine thumbnail. If you collect thumbnails, I would put this one if the "competition worthy" ranks. It's hard to find crystals of this quality in a specimen of this particular size range. Don't miss out. Valued $1,500-$2,000 for superb quality, aesthetics and the fact that you'd be hard-pressed to find another like it.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.