Fluorite

Unknown Owner

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This small miniature off-matrix cluster of stepped gemmy colourless Fluorite cubes is optically almost perfectly transparent. It really is an extremely fine Fluorite with the crystal faces tessellated wonderfully and with just the slightest of chipping to be seen on the main front-facing crystal faces. The back of the specimen is a fracture surface where it was removed from matrix, but overall it is in a really fine shape all round. It comes from the famous Fluorite-bearing veins at Marsanges, Langeac, Brioude, Haute-Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. The Marsanges mine started out in 1830 as an antimony prospect, but shifted later to fluorspar, becoming one of the largest producers in French history, with over 930,000 tons produced before it closed in the 1970s.