Fluorite with Quartz on Adularia (Lockhart Coll.)

Item Description

This is a beautiful plate hosting pink Fluorite from the famous Schnitzel Cleft finds in the Swiss Alps, showing rare examples of Swiss pink fluorites on a nice matrix. Three prominent Fluorite octahedrons are isolated on the plate that contains Quartz and Calcite. The lightly satin lustered, transparent to translucent Fluorites have a lovely pastel pink color and all of them sport a perfect octahedral form. The Fluorites range in size from 2 to 2.5 cm (an inch!) across and have well-defined faces and edges with none of the usual damage or chatter such pieces often have. The Fluorites are largely transparent with translucent areas in the core and exhibit internal cleavage traces which probably help to amplify the apparent color, and are not cracks running to the outside. The coarse granular plate of matrix consists of anhedral Albite or Adularia intergrown and topped with white Calcite rhombohedra to 1.5 cm along with scattered, very well-formed, and mostly doubly-terminated, gemmy Smoky Quartz crystals to 1.7 cm. Overall this is a lovely Swiss Fluorite combination specimen with three pinks on one plate! Ex. Brent Lockhart Swiss collection. He purchased this from well-known multigenerational Swiss dealers, Siber und Siber, in 2017 for $8700 at that time, valuing it at somewhat higher because of the rarity of such specimens from Switzerland.