Spangolite (mined in 1959 by Fred Pough and Mark Bandy!)

Item Description

We picked up this specimen from a couple of friends at the Tucson Show in 2020 who told us that it was collected by two legends in the world of minerals, Fred Pough and Mark Bandy. These gentlemen were two of the most accomplished US mineralogists of the 20th century. You can read their biographies on the Mineralogical Record website ( https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/poughfrederick-h/ ) ( https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/bandymark-chance/ ). Spangolite is one of the most highly sought after rarities from the southwestern United States. It's quite difficult to get your hands on a good specimen, as very little is available these days. This miniature sized specimen features attractive blue-green colored "crusts" of Spangolite on matrix, but the key feature of the specimen is that there are a handful of excellent quality, well-formed, trigonal micro crystals that show an intense blue color with good internal gemminess when backlit on the very end of the piece. These crystals are best viewed under magnification, and we have photographed the piece with a Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens to better illustrate the quality. If you collect secondary copper minerals, micros or minerals of New Mexico, you need to have one of these in your collection, but the added historical provenance makes it all the more valuable.