Smithsonite on Calcite - 1800s, ex Bement, American Museum

Item Description

Outstanding, mid-1800's combination piece from the Altenberg Mine in what is now Belgium, but was previously Prussia/Germany and at times part of The Netherlands. When I first picked this up, thoughts of the beautiful yellow Smithsonites from Berg Aukus came to mind, but these clusters are from Europe! The smithsonites are lovely, rounded, spikey, soft-yellow clusters to 9 mm, numerous and nicely distributed across the sparkly calcite covered matrix. Excellent aesthetics, but now let us consider the provenance: This was formerly in the world-renowned collections of Clarence Bement and the American Museum, as well as the that of Eugene Sensel. Accompanying the specimen is a long letter from a Belgian explaining the locality naming , and how the names changed since Bement's time....very interesting, actually!. Also accompanying is a scan/xerox paper of the full accession information from the New York American Museum of Natural History, showing Bement's purchase information (the museum obtained the collection around 1910 as a gift from banker, JP Morgan!). Note that Bement purchased this from apparently an English dealer in 1876 for the princely sum of $2 - a lot of money back then when the dollar was actually worth much more! The museum exchanged this out to Herb Obodda in 1983, legally. Wonderful history on this spectacular weird locality smithsonite specimen! Valued...nothing comparable, so it is hard to say, but good luck!