Fluorite (beautiful color) on Quartz

Item Description

The Sweet Home Mine is world-famous for its fantastic Rhodochrosites, but it perhaps does not get enough credit for its beautiful and fine quality Fluorites. When the Fluorites are good from this mine, they rival any Fluorites from any other ore body in Colorado. This piece is from the Blue Moon Pocket, which was found in 1996 and produced some excellent Fluorite specimens in various hues, but experienced collectors know that arguably the best BLUE Fluorites from the Sweet Home Mine, came from this pocket. This wonderful striking small cabinet specimen features notably vibrant blue color, sharp, lustrous, gemmy cubic crystals (with thin dodecahedral modifications along the edges) measuring up to 1.1 cm, sitting on Quartz matrix with associated Pyrite and Sphalerite. If you look closely, you can see a thin area of purple color on the far exterior edges of the Fluorites for a nice touch. The color honestly looks better in person, it's quite difficult to accurately capture the exact right hue in a video or photo, but if you hold the piece is your hands, you will find yourself drawn to the captivating hue. No major damage I can find, save the back of one of the Fluorite groups where it was separated from the pocket wall. No Rhodochrosite can be seen on the piece, which isn't a bad thing, it makes the Fluorites all the more significant, as most you don't see specimens that only feature Fluorite crystals, and VERY few of them have this intense color.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 9.2.1 CO.21; 9578. George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.co... for more information