Schorl Tourmaline (circa 1800, with label!),
Ex. MP Sir Robert Ferguson

Item Description

This specimen is part of the 2020 Dallas Mineral Collecting Symposium benefit auction, with proceeds benefiting Mineralogical Record, Rocks & Minerals, Tucson Gem and Mineral Society, and mindat.org. Thanks to all of our participants!

Billing for this auction will occur on Monday, August 24, for payment using PayPal or credit card. Shipping will be billed at cost, or please contact brandy@mineralauctions.com if you'd like to plan on picking up items at future shows or during a stop through Dallas.

Click here for a video of this specimen!

Not only is this a REALLY rare locality tourmaline specimen, from an ancient locality, but it comes with the label from Sir Robert Ferguson, one of the biggest collectors of the turn of the 1800s. This original old parchment label dates to the collection of Sir Robert Ferguson (1769-1840). He was a member of Parliament and the nobility from Kirkaldy, Scotland, and a MAJOR collector at the time in Europe! His collection was said to be among the best ever. He was actually caught in France by Napoleon and held in Paris in the early 1800s as one of the hostage English nobles, trapped in Montmartre where he seems to have spent his time field collecting fossils and gypsum crystals with the great scientist Cuvier! As a result of the legal judgement against him for being the marriage-breaker in the divorce scandal of the Lady Elgin (as in, her husband was away fetching the Elgin marbles from Egypt at the time...), he had stopped collecting by 1810, it is thought. The collection languished in storage until 1998 when the family decided to sell it to Brian Lloyd in London. At the time, Herb Obodda got in first and took some great things, and left behind all kinds of amazing goodies for us smaller dealers! I called Brian Lloyd and asked him if we could buy all the random small stuff for the internet, at a group price, in part for the VirtualShow project that John Veevaert and I were running at the time. Together with John Veevaert, we pooled our money, borrowed from family, and purchased over 500 pieces which we sold online in 1998-2000 through our websites, in partnership. This was one of those specimens, now coming back to me and donated in memory of John and our first big crazy deal. Photo by Jingnan Zhang. Donated by Arkenstone.