Sphalerite with Fluorite

Item Description

A wonderful combo specimen from the Annabel Lee Mine featuring a 6.7 cm group of highly modified, yet fully crystallized dark reddish-brown "ruby jack" Sphalerite associated with rich purple colored, gemmy cubes of Fluorite measuring up to 2.3 cm on minor limestone matrix. Some of the Sphalerites show a tiny bit of a greenish-yellow hue on the edges when backlit. There is a bit of a golden hue underneath the purple portions of the Fluorites, which when backlit create a beautiful fuchsia color. The piece is in good condition, the Sphalerite group is essentially damage-free, though there is some roughness around the periphery where it was removed from the pocket wall. The piece was formerly in the collection of Hugh Hammerslag of Sun City West, Arizona and came to George through Steve Phillips.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 2621 IL.6, 9450 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