Fluorapatite on Quartz

Item Description

Panasqueira is most famous for its distinctive and beautiful Fluorapatite specimens, found in a wide range of colors, often in good sized gemmy crystals. This piece is a wonderfully aesthetic and showy display piece featuring a good number of classic, very lustrous, soft green colored, thick tabular crystals of Fluorapatite measuring up to 3.0 cm across, sitting on a matrix of gemmy, colorless prismatic Quartz crystals. A scattering of metallic golden Pyrite makes for a really nice touch. The Apatites are rather gemmy and when backlit, they show attractive "phantom" color zoning. Now the piece is not damage-free, there are dings on some of the Apatites, and the main Quartz crystal at the top of the piece is not terminated, it has an incomplete growth, not fresh damage, because there isn't a shiny conchoidal fracture, it's matte and looks to have partially re-crystallized, but still not pristine. The damage takes a back seat to the dramatic presentation of the specimen, which is certainly eye-catching, and really stands out among many other examples of the species from this famous locale. Rare to find this particular style on the market now, this is certainly older material, probably dating back to the 1970s era of mining at Panasqueira. Valued $1,500-$2,000.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#34 Po), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection over the next two to three years through our various platforms.