Sphalerite (gemmy green crystals)

Item Description

Please note: This specimen was originally labeled as coming from Farncomb Hill in Breckenridge, which also lies in Summit County, Colorado, but it's a good distance away from the Big Four Mine. Breckenridge would be a likely designation for an uninformed collector at the time because the Big Four Mine is not near any real towns, so presumably lots of pieces back in the day could have been mistakenly labeled as coming from Breckenridge. The piece originally came from the collection of Robert Linck (1905-1970), so was a collector in Philadelphia, and probably had little frame of reference to precise locality information in Colorado at the time he was alive, so he took the Breckenridge designation as being accurate. Linck actually purchased this piece from New York mineral dealer Hugh Ford, who also probably did not have a deep knowledge of precisely what was coming out of the ground in Colorado at the time. I will say that we have done thorough research, and it seems there has never been a sample of gemmy green Sphalerite to come from any locality in Breckenridge. Additionally, it's important to note that the gold districts in Colorado tended to have more brown, golden or black colored Sphalerite crystals, and Breckenridge was certainly a major gold producer, while the silver districts like Creede, Georgetown or even the Portland Mine near Ouray, tended to have green Sphalerites. With that said, there was a small amount of silver content in the Big Four Mine, so we are quite confident that that is where this particular piece was found. Several fine quality complex groups of sharp, well-formed, GEMMY Sphalerite measuring up to about 2.5 cm across, sitting on micro-crystallized Quartz matrix. The Sphalerites all show beautiful green color internally when backlit with rather lustrous faces that really help the color shine through. Overall the piece is in remarkably good shape, with only a few minor areas of roughness. It's quite rare to find these crystals on matrix, as well, typically we only see loose crystal groups off matrix, so the quality of the piece combined with the fact that the crystals are on matrix make this a very enticing and rare locality specimen from this big zinc orebody near Green Mountain Reservoir.
Valued $2,500-$3,500
Ex George Loud Collection No. 2621 CO.17; 6524. 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.com/biographies_labels/george-loud for more information