Rhodochrosite on Manganite ex. Michaels Coll.

Item Description

One of the holy grails of collecting beautiful minerals for a showcase is to get one of these crazy, sparkly, cherry-red rhodos from the 1979-1982 finds in South Africa. Nothing like this, most collectors would agree, has ever been found in the mineral world since, with the possible exception of Sweet Home Mine rhodos. still, even those were hoped for. these were entirely unexpected, and when found also poorly collected so fewer specimens survived than you would have thought. Most of them have small tip dings, as a result of the times and the methods of colelcting, this no exception (though it is minor in context and you have to look close to see it). This piece has FLASH to it. Top luster, and the richest cherry-red candy color you could imagine. It GLOWS with color. The 3-cm radial spray on one end gives it a nice 3-dimensionality, too. From the collection of David Michaels, brother of sportscaster Al, who assembled a fine collection of competition-level miniatures in the mid 1990s and has only recently sold them off (to me). To be absolutely blunt, if this were normal times out in the economy, I would happily nail price this baby at $7500 and simply wait. It is beautiful, and these DO sell for prices formerly reserved for gold and emeralds. But to get some attention to these auctions, I put this in as the pre-eminent loss-leader. If it sells below $4500, it was stolen...