Sphalerite with Siderite (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 it was acquired in Central City, Colorado (which is located in Gilpin County), but it's not labeled as COMING from Central City. With that said, the label has no locality, but it's clearly an Eagle Mine Sphalerite. Sharp, lustrous, black, well-formed crystals of Sphalerite measuring up to 6 mm associated with compressed rhomohedra of beige Siderite on Pyrite matrix. It should be noted that the label erroneously refers to the Siderite as "Barite".