Rutile (100 year old specimen) (ex David Burgess Collection)

Item Description

A fantastic old classic Rutile from an undisclosed locality in the Tyrol region of Austria. These might be the most iconic Alpine Rutiles in the world, and a piece like this in a great treasure as it's an historic specimen dating back to at least 1920. There is a hand-written note with the piece that states it was purchased in 1980 from Ron Bentley. The note goes on to say, "It was probably part of the Schortmann's mineral stock - most of the European pieces came to the U.S. before WWII. So, it's probably collected before 1920, maybe much earlier. The piece features a few sharp, lustrous, prismatic, rich red color Rutile crystals measuring up to 1.5 cm on with Pericline Feldspar on host rock matrix. Good quality and very hard to find on the market these days. Antique Alpine pieces like this are virtually impossible to obtain. The specimen is from the colletion of David Burgess (1951-2016) of Newington, Connecticut. In addition to being the namesake for the extremely rare cobalt arsenate species Burgessite (which he actually discovered), we also assembled one of the largest worldwide species collection in the United States.