Fluorite (uncommon locality specimen)

Item Description

An interesting locality specimen labeled as coming from the "10,000 Ritter Mine", which is technically not part of the original Zehntausend Ritter Mine (which was an old silver and cobalt mine, started in 1528 and worked intermittently until 1779 according to the entry on mindat.org), but a later mining operation along the Bergmännish Glück Flacher vein which produced these particular Fluorite specimens. This piece is a lovely full cabinet sized piece loaded with sharp, well-formed, semi-lustrous cubic crystals measuring up to 2.1 cm on edge. The crystal have a purple hue on the surface, but when they're backlit, you can see a combination of purple and golden-peach hues internally. Most of the crystals are in great condition, very little damage. The underside of the piece reveals an interesting hollow "cast" after a preexisting mineral which has since dissolved away (possibly Calcite?). A really cool display quality specimen that is not only good-sized, but showy as well.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#182 D), 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 through our various platforms.