Galena with Calcite (classic locality)

Item Description

Freiberg is not one of Germany's but all of Europe's great historic mining districts. The entry on mindat.org states that mining was taking place at Freiberg in the 1100s, and continued until 1969. The plethora of classic specimens that have come from this area, along with the fact that it was one of the richest silver deposits in Europe made it an iconic locality for centuries. This piece is a beautiful showy display specimen filled with excellent, metallic, silvery colored, cuboctahedral crystals of Galena measuring up to 3.5 cm across, assocaited with light beige colored Calcite for a nice touch of contrasting color. No major damage I can see on the display side of the piece and is very presentable and showy.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#283 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.