Iridescent Ramsdellite (NEW find)

Item Description

Ramsdellite is a RARE manganese oxide. This is a showy intergrown plate of equant, splendent and IRIDESCENT, black, ramsdellite crystals to 5 mm across. Ramsdellite from this small and defunct mine in a remote corner of Arizona was first found, I am told, in the early 1900s. However, the locality was apparently lost for some time and only rediscovered by the father/son team of Roy Jones and Dick Jones in the 1960s. Some of this material came out then (Roy says about 6 flats). I have seen it turn up, from time to time, in old US collections. However, it has remained fairly rare on the market, and thus expensive. This recent find appeared literally in the middle of the Tucson show and surprised me. It features very fine quality Ramsdellite crystals on manganese-rich matrix, and the crystals have excellent luster and jet-black color to them. There was an old MR article about the Mistake Mine in one of the Arizona issues, and also this is referenced in Mineralogy of Arizona by Bideaux, et al.