Malachite stalactite pocket

Item Description

Jack Halpern loved COLOR above all else, and the collection, dating back to the 1960s, was always meant to scream COLOR at any visitor who entered his basement room in San Francisco. Especially in the early days of the hobby, when so much diversity as we see now did not come to market, a major collector with shelves to fill might buy a lot of common species such as calcite, fluorite...and malachite, which Jack particularly loved in all forms. He had at least 50 malachites in the collection when we bought it, probably more. And, all of them are different! This really interesting, and big-but-not-too-large pocket piece literally contains an entire natural pocket (cavity) of stalactites, preserved just as they formed tens of millions of years ago! The pocket opening is 5-6 cm high in most parts along the front, fully open and so it is easy to see what is inside. While malachite stalactites are not so rare, and neither are pockets of some kind of malachite...specimens like this with whole clusters within and fully preserved are just almost unprecedented in good quality.