Moschellandsbergite (exceptionally rare)

Item Description

Here we have an incredibly hard to find specimen of Moschellandsbergite, a silver mercury amalgam species, that is among the great metallic mineral rarities for collectors. The species was named in 1938 in honor of Moschellandsberg (shortened to Landsberg on most labels you'll see) the type locality for the species. This piece is from the famous Berezovsk deposit in Russia, best known as the type locality for Crocoite (the first pieces were identified in 1766!) but nearly 100 species have been reported from this locality according to the entry on mindat. I will note that mindat does not list Moschellandsbergite as coming from Berezovsk, but the locality info comes directly from Kurt Hefendehl's personal collection catalogue. With that said, this large miniature / small cabinet sized piece hosts a few iron-oxide coated exposed vugs on Quartz which play host to semi-radial groups of soft silvery-grey metallic Moschellandsbergite which measure up to 1.2 cm across. We have photographed the Moschellandsbergite with a Canon MP-E 65 mm macro lens to better illustrate the quality. A supreme rarity for any species collector or a fan of Russian minerals. It's the only one we've ever seen, and I doubt that we'll have another to offer anytime soon, so don't miss out.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#688 Ru), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection for the coming months/years through our various platforms.