significant Azurite (Easter Pocket 1994)

Item Description

This is an impressive small cabinet specimen of Azurite that displays the lustrous, tabular crystal habit so characteristic of the famous Easter Pocket find of 1994, one of the last major "named" and memorable Azurite finds at Tsumeb before its slow death with a whimper as mining ceased and the tunnels flooded. There are nearly a dozen crystals in this cluster that display superb luster and deep blue color and they range in size from 1 to 4.5 cm in maximum dimension. At just under 2 inches, this is a SIGNIFICANTLY sized crystal from the pocket, famous for not only the color and luster, but for the unusual tabular shape of these crystals that makes them distinct from all others here. Azurites from this pocket have a unique, totally characteristic habit that is more flattened than other Azurite styles from the mine. The crystals are in excellent condition with only minor edge wear at the specimen periphery, as is normal for exposed Azurites like this. Small tufts and aggregates of bright green Bayldonite are in association and provide great interest and contrast. The piece has a balanced size for display with overall beauty and impact, especially considering the rarity of pieces this size from the find (most specimens were small, and most crystals 1 inch or smaller as well). The Easter Pocket style and discovery is well documented in the various Tsumeb books by Georg Gebhard and the huge Namibia series of books by Rainer Bode. They are almost impossible to find on the market today. Because of the sculptural quality of the piece and the matrix association, I would rate the aesthetics of this piece highly. If you look at the numbering on the specimen, which is about midrange through Dr. Pohl's almost 80 years of collecting, you can see that this actually was purchased by her in the time they came out.  After that time, the collection grew by another 70,000 or so specimens, but I am very sure there was not another Easter Pocket of this quality obtained since. They all went into collections and tended to remain there. It is hard to value things like this. IF this were a similarly sized specimen with a similarly large and relatively similar shape from Mexico, which were common recently, they would still fetch 5-10k depending on the overall aesthetics. And yet, with the associations as well as the provenance, this is much more rare. Tsumeb specialists we showed this to, attach a premium of 3-5x compared to a similarly "attractive and comparable size" Mexican azurite, in general. So we think attaching a value to this of 15-25k is very conservative by the standards of appreciating the ultimate named pockets and rare finds of the greatest collecting mine on the planet. Lastly, it is from the core Tsumeb suite, the top few hundred pieces, of nearly 13000 Tsumeb specimens amassed by Dr. Pohl in her long lifetime of collecting - that says something!