Mercury & Cinnabar (1840! - rare OLD classic) Neeld & Robertson Coll.

Item Description

OLD-TIME, rich mercury ore from this historic German mercury district, closed since 1942. The sculptural, hefty, brick-red piece is essentially solid cinnabar. Some of the bright silvery specs are native mercury droplets, with most being shiny cinnabar faces. The antique mercury ore specimen was once in the collection of Colonel Joseph Neeld, 1789-1856 (# 2154) and was found before 1840. He was a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom and a Colonel in the Royal Army. This collection, long forgotten and lost track of, resurfaced in England in the early 1980s and was purchased by Richard Barstow (no Neeld labels survived). Ex Kay Robertson Collection # 10738 and acquired in June, 1985 from Herb Obodda. Kay is a prominent California collector, who specialized in European classics (see the article in the March-April, 2007 Mineralogical Record and the 50+ page article in the German Magazine "Mineralien-Welt" November-December 2017). This is a remarkable specimen for the locality, history aside, and is highly valued aside from the Neeld provenance.