Mottramite on Cuprite (RARE combo for Tsumeb)

Item Description

Tsumeb is one of the world's most spectacular mineral localities. Many people regard it as the greatest locality in history, as it not only produced a large number of mineral species, which range from common to ultra-rare, but the vast majority of the pieces rank as either the best examples of their respective species, or very close to being the best. Additionally, Tsumeb had so many unique pockets, that there are loads of associations that are only seen from this locality, and even common minerals that are not often seen together can be found on the same specimen from Tsumeb. This piece is a very rarely seen assoication specimen featuring a coverage of dark olive green, bubbly Mottramite with a drusy sparkling luster, which is covering very dark red metallic Cuprite. This is the ONLY specimen I can remember with Mottramite on Cuprite, and I even did a deep dive on mindat.org to see if there was anything else for comparison, and I couldn't find a single piece with both Mottramite and Cuprite mentioned together on the same specimen. This is a really cool example of the uniqueness that can be seen from Tsumeb, so if you're a Tsumeb collector, a fan of secondary ore minerals, or you just like interesting association specimens, this is something that you might not see available again anytime soon, so don't pass it up. I honestly can't say what the "fair market" value of a piece like this might be, because I don't have anything to compare it to, so don't miss out. This piece comes from the collection of Dr. Barratt Phillips along with a few dealers labels. Some of the labels refer to this piece as Mottramite var: "Psittacinite", but that's an archaic term that is now simply used as a synonym for Mottramite.