significant Baryte with drusy Calcite on Goethite

Item Description

These gorgeous blue barytes (the mineral formerly known as Barite to us old folks!) are modern classics that came and went from a few years of digging in a remote area of Morocco, with the entire deposit now basically extinct and mined out - reduced to a series of honeycomb pits dug by hundreds of miners in search of blue gold. It is in the middle of nowhere, and an aerial drone view shows deep holes where this deposit used to be. This particular specimen is significant with thick crystals of unusually deep color, aesthetically emplaced in a jackstraw pattern on a matrix of limonite. They are both highly lustrous and translucent, and of good size - to 9 cm in length and overall in excellent condition. An added feature is the myriad small calcite crystals on the limonite that gives it a sparkle, something somewhat rare. This is an important display quality specimen. When you can even see any available, at the last shows I attended in 2019, they would be priced easily in the $7500-15,000 range for something of this size and quality.