Quartz

Item Description

This is a wonderful cabinet display specimen of this classic material featuring well-defined "casts" (perimorphs / epimorphs) of tiny "sugary" white Quartz replacing Anhydrite on massive Quartz matrix. The largest "cast" measures 5.0 cm at its longest dimension. No real damage that I can see with the naked eye, except around the periphery where the piece was removed from the pocket wall. A few of the "casts" are actually open / exposed so you can see they are genuinely hollow inside. This piece is very aesthetic and displays wonderfully as you can see from the photos. A wonderful example of these very hard to find replacements from San Juan County. It should be noted that for years people have written that these epimorphs / "casts" were replacements of Quartz after Baryte. People in the know (Brian Kosnar and Virgil Lueth come to mind) always contested that this couldn’t be the case, and that they were most likely after Anhydrite, as anything caustic enough to dissolve Baryte would almost certainly wipe out any other minerals it came in contact with in the pocket.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 210 CO.38. 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