Scheelite (near ''floater'' crystal)

Item Description

This is certainly one of the more impressive examples of Scheelite that we've seen from the Piaotang Mine. It's not only a large, fine, well-formed, pseudo-octahedral crystal, but if you flip it over, you'll see it's almost fully crystallized all around, making it a near "floater", which is quite rare for this locality, and Scheelite in general in my experience. There is one contacted edge that keeps it from being a true "floater", but otherwise it's crystallized everywhere else. The color of the crystal varies from a rich chocolate brown hue on the points (and most of the back of the piece) into a gentle "latte" color in the center of the crystal. With some backlighting, you can see the piece is actually translucent, not opaque, which is worth noting for the size and thickness. All sides are highly lustrous, and aside from a few small nicks, the piece is in great condition. A tiny bit of Pyrite and Calcite can be seen on the back of the specimen for a nice touch. Like with most Scheelites, this piece displays excellent blue-white fluorescence under SW UV light. A very impressive example from a locality that has produced some excellent Scheelites over the years, but in very limited quantity. If I had this one on the shelf at a show, I would have it priced at $2,500. From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#698 C), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection for the coming months/years through our various platforms.