Halite (RARE locality specimen)

Item Description

Typically when people think of Halite specimens from California, images of the famous pink crystals from Searles Lake in San Bernardino County come to mind. THIS piece is from a much rarer locality, the South Bay Salt Works in Chula Vista, and it's the only one we can remember having to offer in the auctions. The piece has a notably colorless hue, but the crystals are very well-formed, showing fairly well-defined cubic faces, with only a slight amount of "hoppered"/skeletal growth. The crystals are fairly gemmy to boot, and the largest cube measures 1.8 cm on edge. No major damage I can see, and the overall presentation is quite eye-catching. A cool rare locality specimen for any fan of California minerals or worldwide Halites. For reference, this piece was purchased by George circa 1960 for the bargain price of 50 cents!
Ex George Loud Collection No. 9.1.1.1 CA.1; 0458 George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/george-loud for more information