Rhodochrosite on Aegirine (ex David Burgess Collection)

Item Description

Mount Saint-Hilaire is one of the world's most significant localities. The world-famous Poudrette Quarry is the source of many "best in the world" specimens of many species. As of this posting, 434 minerals have been reported from this one locale, the second most in the world after the Clara Mine in Germany according to mindat.org (https://www.mindat.org/toptypelocs.php). It's interesting to note that even well-known species like Rhodochrosite have their own unique appearance at Mount Saint-Hilaire This piece features many small, sharp, well-formed, reddish-orange colored compressed crystals of Rhodochrosite measuring up to 3 mm aesthetically sprinkled over a prismatic crystal of altered Aegirine. These might be the most distinctive Rhodochrosite crystals from any locality as they simply do not resemble anything else I've seen from around the world. Very attractive, and harder to find on the market as I'm told that collecting at the quarry is now restricted by new ownership, so specimens will not be as easy to obtain as they have been for years. From the worldwide collection of David Burgess (1951-2016). David was a prolific species collector from Newington, Connecticut, and the namesake for the extremely rare cobalt arsenate species Burgessite, which he discovered.