Bertrandite with Quartz
Unknown Owner
Colorless micro crystals of thin platy bertrandite throughout this matrix with colorless crystallized quartz.The Hayes Ledge quarries, consisting of the adjacent East and West open cuts situated on a prominent ridge in Greenwood, Oxford County, Maine, United States, represent a historic granitic pegmatite locality celebrated for producing distinct crystals of the rare beryllium silicate mineral bertrandite, including well-formed butterfly V-twin crystal aggregations. Geologically, this rugged upland site exposes a highly evolved, zonate lithium-beryllium-bearing granitic pegmatite body hosted within Paleozoic-age metamorphic schists of the Appalachian orogenic belt. During the late-stage cooling of the parent granitic magma, fractional crystallization concentrated highly volatile, beryllium-rich hydrothermal solutions within the core margin, allowing pristine beryl crystals to form, which were subsequently attacked and dissolved by late-stage fluids to reprecipitate bertrandite as lustrous, cream-colored to colorless tabular prisms inside porous albite cleavelandite matrices and pocket collapse breccias. Historically, localized open-cast quarrying at Hayes Ledge began during the early-to-mid twentieth century, primarily targeting industrial-grade feldspar, quartz, and scrap mica for industrial applications, with sporadic activity continuing through the mid-twentieth century until commercial operations for manufacturing feedstocks ceased. Following decades of abandonment, the quarries experienced a dramatic resurgence as a dedicated, specialized specimen mining operation in the early twenty-first century, culminating in a historic August 2017 excavation by legendary field miner Frank Perham and his crew, who breached the massive, eighty-foot-long Mother Mary Pocket.
Product details
Species
SizeSmall Cabinet
Dimensions8.0 x 5.0 x 3.0 cm
Added on05/27/2026
Locality
Hayes Ledge Quarry, Greenwood, Maine, USA
Known provenance
| Date | Collector | Acquisition price |
|---|---|---|
| 05/2026 | Unknown Owner | $45.00 |
| — | Weinrich Minerals | Not disclosed |
Comments