Stephanite (old classic material) (ex David Burgess Collection)

Item Description

Stephanite is one of the great classic silver sulfosalt minerals, named after the famous Archduke Stephan Franz Victor von Habsburg-Lothringen of Austria, who had one of the finest mineral collections in the world for the time period. This piece is labeled as coming from the 50th Level of Vojtěch Mine in Příbram, Czech Republic, but the species is not listed on mindat.org. Now the specimen comes with a label from well-known Czech/Slovak mineral dealer, Josef Vajdak, so it's certainly likely that the locality is correct, but it was simply never reported. With that said, the piece hosts several excellent, sharp, well-formed dark grey-black colored crystals of Stephanite measuring to about 1 mm associated with Pyrite, reddish-brown Sphalerite and Quartz. The Stephanites are best seen under magnification, and they look beautiful up close. If you collect silver-bearing minerals, sulfosalts, or minerals of the former Czechoslovakia, don't miss out on this incredibly hard to find piece from this historic mine that dates back to 1779. From the worldwide collection of David Burgess (1951-2016) with a label from noted rare species dealer Josef Vajdak. David was a prolific species collector from Newington, Connecticut, and the namesake for the extremely rare cobalt arsenate species Burgessite, which he discovered.