Fluorite (''phantom'' color zoned crystals)

Item Description

A lovely specimen from what mindat.org refers to as an ancient Fluorite mine, which, "from 1918 until 1948, produced 80 000 tons of ore". This is a lovely display piece features many sharp, well-formed, textbook cubes with gorgeous blue color on the exterior and wonderful golden "phantoms" in the cores of the crystals. The largest Fluorite measures 1.6 cm on edge. Most of the crystals are in superb condition, but there are some rough corners/edges here and there, and obviously it's contacted on the side/bottom where it was removed from the pocket wall. The crystals show a bit of a color change, where they are a light blue color in halogen lighting, and a more saturated blue in sunlight. If you look at the underside of the specimen, you'll see that the Fluorites grew on a previous generation of Fluorite with more saturated blue-green, golden and purple hues!
From the collection of the long time, beloved, well-known French field collector, Paul Zerfass (Collection #59). Zerfass built this worldwide collection over nearly 50 years, many of which were personally collected. A biography featuring specimens from his collection (along with his face on the cover) is in the May - June 2017 issue of French mineral magazine, Le Règne Minéral. We have a .pdf copy of the article for anybody interested in reading it (though it's mostly in French). Just drop us a line and know that you'd like to have a copy.