Vivianite (ex Bob Reynolds Collection)

Item Description

The Morococala Mine is famous for producing some of the largest and most spectacular Vivianite crystals ever found in history in the early 1980s. The stories of incredibly large plates of Vivianite crystals just pouring out is the stuff of legend, but it only last for a brief period of time, as the mine manager decided that the miners were too distracted collecting Vivianite and not attending to their duties underground, so he decided to blow up the entire section of the mine where the Vivianite was being collected, thus greatly limiting the number of specimens that would make their way to the market. This piece features lustrous, sharp, prismatic dark blue-green crystals of Vivianite with minor matrix. The largest Vivianite measures 2.8 cm. These piece are no longer being mined and they are incredibly difficult to find on the market today. From the collection of Robert (Bob) Reynolds who passed in August of 2020. Bob was a well-known fossil and mineral expert and former Curator of Earth Sciences at the San Bernardino County Museum in California. The rare phyllomanganate-chromate species Reynoldsite was named in his honor in 2011.