Tennantite on Quartz (old Butte) ex Harvard Coll.

Item Description

An important and outstanding, old-time Butte tennantite on quartz specimen with a fine provenance. Sharp, moderately lustrous, metallic-gray, mostly intergrown, tetrahedral tennantite crystals to 7 mm are attractively festooned on the contrasting quartz point matrix. The large discrete crystal is in the center of the piece. These are VERY LARGE crystals for the locale, as tennantite crystals examined for the Mineralogical Record Butte Special Issue (Vol. 33, # 1, 2002) averaged ONLY 1 mm! This superb and very rare Butte piece has an outstanding provenance. Originally in the A.F. Holden Collection (a very prominent Western U.S. mining engineer). He bequeathed his large collection to Harvard University in 1911. Ex Phil Scalisi Collection. Value of such a fine and rare, old-time Butte tennantite with an excellent provenance??? Surely at least $1000-1200 to the locality and species collector.