Rhodochrosite Stalactite (polished)

Item Description

The Capillitas Mine in Argentina has yielded provided a tremendous amount of fine quality stalactitic Rhodochrosite over the years. These specimens feature beautiful red and pink color banding, but rarely is the material gemmy enough for faceting, so most of it is either sliced or cabbed. With that said, this is a beautiful stalactite of Rhodo from Argentina that has been polished on one end, and shows a deep rose color in the center, with a lighter pink "rind". My favorite aspect of the piece is the fact that the exterior is completely intact, which is hard to find when it comes to this material. A gorgeous piece of these well-known classics.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.