Turquoise (uncommon locality)

Item Description

A cool locality specimen of Turquoise from the Turquoise Mountain locality in San Bernardino County, California. Beautiful, richly colored semi-spherical aggregates of Turquoise are scattered over the underlying matrix. These are rarely seen on the market, and the color is excellent for the species.
This piece comes from the personal collection of Colorado mining legend, Dave Bergman, the maternal grandfather of Brian Kosnar. Dave is now retired from mining, but he worked for decades in various mines underground in Colorado, as a miner, mechanic, engineer, shift boss and foreman. His biggest claim to fame is that he was the foreman and the primary person in charge of mining and specimen recovery at the Sweet Home Mine in Colorado in the 1970s alongside his son-in-law, Rich Kosnar. This project what was the FIRST ever operation for specimen recovery at this historic locality. A full-page photograph of Dave can be seen mining underground at the Sweet Home in on page 58 of Peter Bancroft's book "Gem and Crystal Treasures".