Sphalerite (ex Willard Wulff Collection)

Item Description

This specimen comes from the collection of Willard W. Wulff (1904-1998) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, a prominent figure and collector of Colorado minerals. Wulff was one of the founding members of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society in 1936. You can read Willard's bio on the Mineralogical Record website here ( http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1528 ). The piece comes with a typed label from Wulff on one of his famous 3x5 index cards which states that it was obtained from fellow CSMS founder, George White and simply says "Kokomo, Colo." as the given locality. I am fairly certain that this is the Kokomo-Tenmile Area in Summit County, and not the Kokomo Mine in Central City. This piece hosts a handful sharp, well-formed, black, lustrous, crystals of Sphalerite measuring up to about 8 mm across associated with off white granular Quartz and minor golden Pyrite. The piece isn't in top shape, as many crystals are contacted, but the piece is still a good representation of this hard to find material from Colorado. The cataloague number on this specimen is #158 in Wulff's collection, so it's a good bet that he added it at some point in the 1940s or possibly in the 1950s, meaning that the piece is at least 65 years old.