Sphalerite (excellent locality specimen)

Item Description

The Camp Bird Mine is one of the most famous localities in Colorado mining history. It was originally discovered by Thomas Walsh in 1896, and the riches he gained from the gold ore in the mine made him a fortune totaling $3,000,000 at the time, which is the equivalent of $109,872,000 in 2023 US dollars, according to the entry on Wikipedia.com. With that said, the mine lasted for nearly another 100 years, and specimen preservation was at its peak between the 1950s-1970s. This piece is a beautiful, and I will say fairly hard to find THUMBNAIL sized example of Sphalerite from this prestigious locality featuring a predominant, very sharp, rather lustrous, jet-black, well-formed crystal measuring 1.2 cm sitting atop a mound of smaller black Sphalerites, with a bit of accenting white Calcite and a TINY bit of brownish-green Epidote (a sure sign that this piece was mined in the contact replacement ore body of the mine). No damage I can find, and the piece sits beautifully and presents incredibly well. I imagine that most thumbnail collectors don't have a good Camp Bird Sphalerite in theirs collections, as they were not terribly common in this size range in eye-catching examples like this. The piece is easily 50 years old, and good Camp Bird pieces are almost non-existent on the market today.
From the collection of Gary and Terry Butts of Livermore, Colorado. This husband and wife collecting duo were childhood sweethearts, and have been together since they began dating as teenagers growing up in East Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s. Both of them had an early interest in the hobby thanks to the fact that Terry's parents had a keen interest in lapidary, which sparked an interest in rocks for both of them. Gary and Terry were featured in an article in the Des Moines Register on Feb 4, 1962 (see photo in this listing) highlighting their interest and prowess in the hobby as youngsters. Gary traveled to various localities around the US as a teenager with his father (who worked in the tin industry), to personally collect specimens. He then attended the School of Mines in Golden, Colorado and graduated in 1967 with a degree in extractive metallurgical engineering. We went to work for Duval Corp at the Esperanza Mine south of Tucson, Arizona and then work for Cyprus Mines, Hazen Research, Pincock, Allen & Holt and the Colorado School of Mines Research Institute. His final job was in the mineral and environmental division of Intertek Testing Services of London, which owned the Canadian mineral testing company, Bonder Clegg. Gary's various jobs allowed him to travel the world and build his collection by buying a lot of specimens in person when they were coming out of the ground. Additionally, Terry's uncle was a miner in Creede, Colorado and later owned a rock shop which supplied Gary with specimens from the area. The specimens in this auction represent what Gary and Terry considered the "cream of the crop" of their collection.