Sphalerite with Dolomite (ex Willard Wulff Collection)

Item Description

A nice cabinet sized display specimen from the famous locality at Picher. There are not a lot of species found in this area, but the Sphalerites and Galena remain as some of the most recognizeable specimens from the locality. 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 indicates it was entry number 25 in his collection, so it's around 80 years old by my estimation. Dozens of sharp, lustrous, deep reddish brown tetrahedral crystals of Sphalerite are associated with sharp, pearly, curved rhombic Dolomite on the other side of the matrix. The largest Sphalerite measures 1.4 cm across, but the best quality crystals are actually some of the smaller ones. Good quality, and despite the fact that there was a lot of these pieces on the market years ago, very few of them are out there now.