A shocking cluster of bright red rhodochrosite that can be seen from half a room away. This small mine high in the Andes produced some of the finest cherry-colored rhodochrosite crystals in the world, even before they were known to collectors from Sweet Home Mine in the USA. The cherry red color, transparency, and luster of the sharp crystals here (which reach 2 cm!), ABSOLUTELY SCREAM that they could be from Colorado! If you had never seen one of these old rhodos in person, it would be easy to simply label this as Sweet Home Mine at double the price (as the USA origin commands a premium in the market, because it is so well known). However, if you know the subtle details to spot them, this has a tiny association with small pastel fluorite crystals here and there; and a few rhodochrosite crystals have small black cores where they overgrew clusters of tiny hübnerite crystals. Taken together, as tempting as it is to look at this and think it a particularly choice Sweet Home piece, we know that it is from these antique finds of Peru. Most of us will never see or hold one in person. Very minor damage when looking up close, trivial in context - and also not remediated by modern labs with epoxy restoration. This is a "modern classic" in some sense, in that many collectors of the Golden Age of mineral collecting obtained one for their collections when these came out of a few pockets in the 1970s-early 80s. However, the pieces are now all in major legacy collections, and owners tend to hold them. One particularly famous pocket of these was produced in the early 1980s and brought to market by Ken Roberts (although of as lightly different style, and so that was the latest origin of such things - we think this find was somewhat earlier as it has even more intense color and slightly different patterning).
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