Olivenite

$12,500.00

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This Olivenite is must rank high amongst the very best miniatures for its species ever found at Tsumeb and typifies why this mine is perhaps the best locality in the world. The Olivenite forms thick, almost blocky, acicular crystals of about 8 mm tall and typically 4 x 2 mm in cross section. Their colour is very dark green tending to almost black. The crystals have splendid terminations and richly pervade a shallow Malachite-lined vug. The Olivenite crystals surrounding the vug tend to be unterminated due to originally being points of contact while in-situ. One of the accompanying old typed (A. Berger) labels has written 'D.S.W. Afrika'; German South West Africa was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915. This range of dates; the habit and quality of the Olivenite crystals and the associated emerald-green Malachite and sulphide matrix prove this specimen is from the near-surface levels; within either the first oxidation zone or the legendary surface outcrop, indicating it was mined somewhere between about 1907 (when the outcrop still existed) and 1914, when mining operations were down to only 6 Level. This is a superb and historic specimen worthy of the very finest of Tsumeb collections.