Quartz var: Amethyst

Item Description

Thunder Bay is a famous Amethyst locality, and one of the great North American Quartz sites. It has yielded some distinctive specimens of Amethyst with large, fine quality crystals of superb rich purple color. This piece is a wonderful crystallized plate filled with very sharp, highly lustrous, pyramidal crystals measuring up to 1.1 cm, with a saturated purple hue and decent internal gemminess when backlit. The crystals have a tiny flattened spherical inclusions of deep reddish iron oxide, giving the piece a distinctive appearance, characteristic of the locality. Most of the crystals are in very good condition, though the periphery is contacted where the piece was removed from the pocket wall. Still a showy and eye-catching example of these well-known specimens.
From the collection of Jack Halpern No. 966. Jack was born May 18, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, but has been a long-time resident of San Francisco. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the world encompassing over 3,200 specimens with a specific emphasis on color, quality, and style/aesthetics, which is evident in every piece. He admired specimens of all sizes from thumbnails to large cabinets and the vast majority of them rank from fine to world-class in their quality.
Above all else, Jack is considered to be the greatest gentleman in the modern era of mineral collecting. He is beloved by all those who have met him, and he truly is one of the most iconic figures in the mineral world. We recently acquired Jack's 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 pieces for their collections. We are honored to have the opportunity to offer Jack's treasures to everyone on a regular basis in the auctions.
We encourage you to read our blog post at https://www.irocks.com/the-jack-halpern-collection or his profile on the Mineralogical Record website https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/halpernjack/ for more information