Quartz pseudomorphs after Calcite on Quartz (ex Dave Bergman Collection)

Item Description

A beautiful and showy specimen from the famous Camp Bird Mine near the town of Ouray, Colorado. This piece dates back to the 1970s and features a few well-formed, eye-catching scalenohedral crystals of what used to be Calcite, but have been replaced/pseudomorphed by sugary white Quartz sitting on stubby, milky, sharp, lustrous hexagonal Quartz crystal matrix. The largest Calcite pseudomorph measures 1.1 cm. The piece is in excellent shape all around, with no major damage that I can find. These are rare from the Camp Bird Mine, and certainly desirable and worth adding to any Colorado mineral collection, a pseudomorph collection or a suite of Quartz specimens. From the collection of Colorado mining legend, Dave Bergman. Dave actually self-collected this specimen while he worked at the Camp Bird Mine. Dave is now retired from mining, but was formerly the foreman and primary person in charge of recovering specimens at the famous Sweet Home Mine near Alma, Colorado during the late 1970s, and the maternal grandfather of Brian Kosnar. See Dave's photo mining at the Sweet Home on page 58 of Peter Bancroft's book "Gem and Crystal Treasures".​