Fluorite (unusual tabular habit) (ex Dave Bergman Collection)

Item Description

An odd Fluorite specimen from this famous Southern Illinois locality. The piece is notably compressed / tabular in habit, which is not unheard of for Fluorite, but certainly not commonly seen, especially from this mine. The piece is nearly a complete "floater", as it's etched on all sides, but if you rotate it in the light, you can still see lustrous cubic faces reflecting all over. The color is a combination of gentle silvery-blue and soft yellow hues, and if you look closely, you can see tiny metallic Marcasite crystals frozen inside the Fluorite. A really attractive and unusual specimen of this classic material. Now that mining in Southern Illinois has ceased, there are less and less of these pieces on the market, and they are certainly some of the finest and most celebrated examples of the species from any US locality. From the collection of Colorado mining legend, Dave Bergman (with an old label from Ross Lillie that says the piece was collected in April of 1988). Dave is now retired, but among other things, he was the foreman and primary person in charge of recovering specimens at the famous Sweet Home Mine near Alma, Colorado during the late 1970s. He is also the maternal grandfather of Brian Kosnar. See Dave's photo mining at the Sweet Home on page 58 of Peter Bancroft's book "Gem and Crystal Treasures".