Diopside (RARE locality!) (ex Institute of Mineralogy - Tohoku University Collection)

Item Description

It's virtually impossible to get your hands on any mineral specimens from North Korea. If you look on mindat.org, there are only 39 pieces on the entire site listed from the country. This is the first and only specimen of Diopside that we've ever had to offer from North Korea. The specimen comes from the Institute of Mineralogy at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and lists the locality only as "Northern Korea". It's impossible to know for certain when the piece was collected, but it likely dates back 80+ years prior World War II. The piece is a blocky, dark greenish-grey prism with some well-formed faces and even good luster in area. Small embedded groups of Mica (possibly Phlogopite?) can be seen in a few spots here and there. Overall, the piece is in fairly good shape, and while it's not pristine, what really matters here is the locality. How many of you don't have a single piece from North Korea in your collections?