Microcline var: Amazonite with Quartz var: Smoky

Item Description

When it comes to minerals of Colorado, people immediately think of things like Rhodochrosite and Amazonite, which are signatures of the state. The various pegmatites in Park and Teller Counties have yielded what are certainly the finest examples of Amazonite with Smoky Quartz in the world. Here we have a fantastic showy display specimen of this famous material featuring a few well-formed, sharp, prismatic crystals of richly colored Smoky Quartz measuring up to 4.2 cm, which are sitting atop strong green-blue colored blocky Amazonite crystals measuring to 2.9 cm with a bit of bladed white Albite var: Cleavelandite. It's quite difficult to find specimens with all three minerals together in my experience, and the color of the Amazonites is quite good for the material. The piece sits beautifully on its own without a base or clay, and it's completely UN-repaired, which is a rarity in the modern era of collecting, as many pieces from the Crystal Peak area are glued back together, sometimes multiple times, so this is a great throwback to the days when collectors typically didn't buy repaired specimens. A fantastic, aesthetic specimen of this famous material. Originally this piece was part of the collection of Robert Lambert (1919-2008).
Valued $7,000-$8,000
Ex George Loud Collection No. 210 CO.21; 8552. George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/george-loud for more information