Quartz replacing Anhydrite (ex Gary Weaver Collection)

Item Description

Here we have a seldom-seen specimen from the famous Cement Creek area in the San Juan Mountains. A vein outcrop discovery in 2009 produced some of the most beautiful Quartz "casts" from anywhere in Colorado. This piece features a few well-defined "casts" (perimorph / epimorph) of "sugary" Quartz replacing Anhydrite with additional drusy Quartz spheroidal groups on massive Quartz matrix. A bit of orange iron oxide inclusions, give the piece a nice two tone coloring, so it's not just flat white. The largest "cast" measures 2.9 cm long. No real damage that I can see with the naked eye, except around the periphery where the piece was removed from the pocket wall. This piece was collected by Robert Stoufer in 2009. It should be noted that for years people have written that these epimorphs / "casts" were replacements of Quartz after Barite. 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 Barite would almost certainly wipe out any other minerals it came in contact with in the pocket. A wonderful example of these very hard to find replacements from San Juan County. From the collection of Gary Weaver (1944-2019), an electrical engineer who worked for Hughes Aircraft in California. After retiring to Prescott, Arizona in the early 2000s, Gary rekindled his childhood love of minerals, amassing a collection of roughly 2000 specimens, focusing on localities in which he and his wife had lived or visited (Mexico, Peru and the western / southwestern United States). You can read Gary's obituary here https://www.dcourier.com/news/2019/apr/27/obituary-gary-richard-weaver/