Fluorite (ex Gary Weaver Collection)

Item Description

Mt. Antero is a 14,000+ foot peak, and the highest summit of the southern Sawatch Range in Central Colorado. It's one of the more rugged localities for field collecting in the state. People have been collecting at Mt Antero since at least 1885, and they are still up there today digging for crystals. The locality is best known for producing some of the finest crystals of Aquamarine from any locality in North America, but we also see species like Phenakite, Smoky Quartz and Fluorite from time to time. This piece is a good sized Fluorite crystal, especially for Mt. Antero, with a rich green color and white streaks of what is presumed to be Albite(?). Now it's not a complete crystal, but rather a cleavage crystal where every side has been cleaved off to give the illusion of a complete crystal, but it's technically damaged all around, like the old Fluorite cleavage crystals that were all over the market from Southern Illinois a few decades ago. With that said, it's still a cool reference specimen for any collector interested in gem pegmatite crystals or minerals of Colorado. From the collection of Gary Weaver (1944-2019), an electrical engineer who worked for Hughes Aircraft in California. After retiring to Prescott, Arizona in the early 2000s, Gary rekindled his childhood love of minerals, amassing a collection of roughly 2000 specimens focusing on localities in which he and his wife had lived or visited (Mexico, Peru and the western / southwestern United States). You can read Gary's obituary here https://www.dcourier.com/news/2019/apr/27/obituary-gary-richard-weaver/