Realgar (classic material)

Item Description

A classic example of famous Getchell Mine Realgars. This miniature sized piece features brilliant red, lustrous prismatic crystals measuring up to 4 mm on matrix from this famous mine Humboldt County, Nevada. There is a bit of roughness in a few sots, but there are also some excellent, very well-terminated crystals which look beautiful up close as they are gemmy and glow with that fiery red hue when backlit. Classic material, and much harder to find on the market now than they were 25-30 years ago.
This piece comes from the personal collection of Colorado mining legend, Dave Bergman, the maternal grandfather of Brian Kosnar. Dave is now retired from mining, but he worked for decades in various mines underground in Colorado, as a miner, mechanic, engineer, shift boss and foreman. His biggest claim to fame is that he was the foreman and the primary person in charge of mining and specimen recovery at the Sweet Home Mine in Colorado in the 1970s alongside his son-in-law, Rich Kosnar. This project what was the FIRST ever operation for specimen recovery at this historic locality. A full-page photograph of Dave can be seen mining underground at the Sweet Home in on page 58 of Peter Bancroft's book "Gem and Crystal Treasures".