Manganite (rare locality)

Item Description

Manganite was first discovered in Ilfeld, Thuringia, Germany in the 1820s, and it is largely agreed that those specimens are still the standard for the species. With that said, there are many other localities for the species in Germany, and this piece is from an incredibly rare locality, the Bülten-Adenstedt Mine in Ilsede, Lower Saxony. According to the listing on mindat.org, specimens were collected in the 1960s, so this one is around 60 years old. It's the ONLY specimen of Manganite that we've seen from the locality. It features rarely seen flattened or tabular style crystals, not the more robust thicker examples from Ilfeld. The word "Eudflachen" can be seen on the old antique hand-written label accompanying the piece, which translates to "flat" in English. There are dozens of sharp, well-formed, prismatic crystals with thin striations measuring up to about 8 mm, sitting atop host rock matrix. Most of the crystals are undamaged, though the peripheral edges are forgivably contacted where the piece was removed from the pocket wall. A really wonderful and incredibly hard to fin example of this well-known sulfide from this ancient iron mine according to mindat. The piece comes from the collection of Brian Kosnar, and was originally from the collection of Kay Robertson (#8994). The back of Kay's label states that she purchased it from Walt Lidstrom in 1980, and it was accompanied by the old hand-written label from an unknown German collection. Valuable for the locality and the great pedigree.