Realgar (ex Franceso Bedogne Collection)

Item Description

A hard to find matrix specimen of the beloved and elusive specimens of Realgar from the Royal Reward Mine in Washington. The label accompanying the piece is somewhat incorrect as it was labeled from the "King Mine, Reward, Washington", when it's actually the Royal Reward Mine in King County, Washington. With that said, it's one of the better small cabinet specimens of the material that I've seen, and these have to be some of the finest crystals of Realgar from anywhere in North America outside of the Getchell Mine in Nevada. Several sharp, lustrous, bright cherry red color prismatic crystal of Realgar measuring up to 1.3 cm are associated with smaller Realgars on host rock matrix. The color, luster and gemminess are very good. Despite a bit of roughness around the periphery, it's still great quality and very hard to find on the market. These specimens came out in the 1940s-1950s and you can only find them in old collections. From the worldwide collection of famed Italian mineral collector, field collector and author, Francesco Bedogne of Sondrio, Italy (Collection #31). The label accompanying the piece states that it was obtained in 1972 by somebody named Levoux. Bedogne wrote dozens of articles and several books about the mineralogy of Italian Alpine localities such as Val Bregaglia, Val Masino, Val Codera, Val Spluga, Valtellina and the famous Val Malenco. He was also the founder of the Valtellinese Mineralogical Institute.