Twinnite (very rare) (ex Josef Vajdak)

Item Description

Twinnite is a very rare lead thallium antimony arsenic sulfosalt, and this is honestly the ONLY piece of this material that we've had to offer. This specimen hosts micro black metallic Twinnite on host rock matrix. It's truly a micro specimen to be sure, but how often does one have the chance to obtain a sample of this amazingly rare material? I was curious as to how this species got its name, and according to mindat.org it was named "after Robert Mitchell Thompson (1918-1967), professor of mineralogy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada). Thompson means "son of Thomas"; the latter is Aramaic for "a twin". The name is doubly appropriate in alluding to the polysynthetic twinning present in the mineral". Not too many people get morphology in the name of their species. As I mentioned, this is the ONLY piece of this species that we've seen, and comes with a classic label from Josef Vajdak / Pequa Rare Minerals, which immediately increases the value. You can read Joe's biography here: http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1371