Galena (fine quality)

Item Description

A fine quality and very attractive small cabinet sized display specimen of Galena from Dalnegorsk. Some of the finest contemporary examples of Galena have come from this area, and they are regarded among the best examples of the species ever found. This piece is a robust, showy and three-dimensional specimen featuring many very sharp, well-formed, lustrous, silvery-grey, metallic cuboctahedral crystals of Galena measuring up to 3.0 cm across, with a small amount of brown-black Sphalerite on the back. The front/display side of the piece is in superb condition, I can't find any real damage, though it is contacted on the back where it was removed from the pocket wall. The crystals are really fine for the locality, and they even show a tiny bit of skeletal growth in a few areas for a nice touch. The accompanying label states that the piece was collected in the 1980s. Valued $1,500.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.