Pyromorphite (classic material)

Item Description

Pyromorphite is one of the most popular secondary ore minerals for collectors, due to the fact that is colorful, it's found in numerous world localities in fine display specimens, and the crystals are just plain beautiful. The famous Bunker Hill Mine was an important lead-zinc-silver deposit that produced some of the finest Pyromorphite specimens from any locality in the Western Hemisphere. The mine operated for a century (closing forever in 1988), and fine quality specimens such as this one are now quite difficult to obtain on the market, especially nearly 40 years after it came out of the ground. This piece came from a discovery in the late 1970s-early 1980s and features beautiful, fine quality, lustrous, sharp, well-formed, orange to slightly greenish colored hexagonal prisms of Pyromorphite which have a secondary overgrowth of a later generation of orange colored (arsenic-bearing) of little thin prisms of Pyromorphite sitting on top of the larger crystals. The main Pyromorphite crystal is a wonderful, robust "barrel" measuring 2.1 cm, and sitting aesthetically atop the specimen. Great condition all over, with no major damage that I can see. Classic material from Idaho, you don't see it around anymore, and the best pieces from Bunker Hill are among the best Pyromorphites in the world. From the collection of Carl Acosta #35431. If I had this one for sale on the shelf at a show, I would have it in the range of about $3,000 retail.