Sylvanite

$10,000.00

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The ArkenstoneFeatured

3,403 for sale·Member since 2026

A very rich and nearly cabinet-sized specimen of Sylvanite from the famous Cripple Creek mining district of Colorado. This important specimen features a myriad of silvery-white crystals forming a thick carpet (individually from 2 to 3 mm in size) in an almost a serpent-like pattern on a velvety brown Goethite coated matrix. The crystals are small, interconnected and brilliantly metallic with the contrast of the Sylvanite crystals on the Goethite just tremendously artistic. This is simply one of the richest examples of this material we have seen for sale. Sylvanite is a very rare silver-gold telluride and this locality has arguably produced some of the best examples for the species. Seldom do you see such rich pieces such as this from Colorado anymore. This is a major specimen for the species and locale. Originally from the F. John Barlow Collection (sold in 1998-99). Later to Mark Mauthner (well-known sulfide and metallics expert), and then Ross Beaty collections. Ross Beaty is a Vancouver-based billionaire geologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist best known for founding Pan American Silver and Equinox Gold. He obtained much of Mauthner's collection and others to found a mineral and natural history museum in Vancouver, which never opened. The collection was, in part, later sold. Mauthner brokered the sale of this one to John Dagenais (well-known Canadian collector specializing in rare species), and we just bought the Dagenais Collection. In many ways, this was to me as a USA-based mineral collector of historic classics, his most important specimen. Ex. John Dagenais collection. Illustrated in his chapter of Mineral Collectors of the Northwest, Mineralogical Record (September 2019), page 48. I had a vague memory of seeing this published before and looked in the 1998 Barlow Book. Sure enough...there it is, with additional provenance to Lazard Cahn, dating this to the early 1900s (Barlow purchased heavily from Mitch Gunnell and Larry Conklin, who both had much from Cahn).