Malachite (very rare locality specimen)

Item Description

A rather hard to find specimen of Malachite from the Durgy Mine which according to the entry on mindat.org states it was primarily a gold mine, with trace copper and silver minerals. This piece is the only specimen of Malachite we've ever seen from the locality and features attractive little deep green colored "rosette"-esque aggregates (presumably pseudomorphs after Azurite) measuring up to about 5 mm across, sitting on white Quartz with minor dark reddish-black Cuprite. A very cool rare locality specimen, and incredibly desirable from this old locality that dates back to the early 1900s.
From the collection of Norman Kennedy ("Kenny") Gay (1953-2023), a geologist, geoscience educator and mineral collector from North Carolina. (#M28 K.1). Kenny worked for North Carolina Geological Survey starting 1995, and he was a member of the adjunct faculty at Wesleyan College, and a professor of geology since 2001. He assembled a large collection of worldwide minerals specimens, though he focused mainly on minerals of North Carolina. Kenny did substantial work documenting all of the significant mineral occurrences and mining/mineral collecting in North Carolina. He might be best associated with the Redmond Mine, where the rare extremely rare lead sulfate Kennygayite was discovered and named in his honor in 2022. Kenny was the first person to collect specimens at this locality, which lead Jason Smith to take an interest in this assemblage, and later name a mineral in Kenny's honor.