Silver (fine locality specimen)

Item Description

An impressive, big showy specimen of native silver from Aspen, which was a major silver-producing district in Colorado long before it was a destination for skiers. The total silver production in the district was 101 million troy ounces from the 1880s until the 1950s. Most of the specimens you'll find are on the small side, typically thumbnails or miniatures, but big pronounced examples like this are few and far between. The specimen is virtually 100% silver, with only a tiny bit of matrix, and to quote from George's label the piece is a, "flattened mass, basically consisting of merged tiny wires". If you look closely, you can see somewhat "wire-esque" arborescent formations, which have compressed into a big eye-catching "sheet" of silver. A beautiful and notably hard to find display specimen from one of the top silver districts in the state.
Valued $10,000 for the fact that large, impressive, historic examples like this are simply non-existent on the market, they only exist in very old collections, most often only in museums, and they are not available for purchase.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 1113 CO.1; 1717. George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.co... for more information