Cuprite

$150.00

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Despite being so vaguely provenanced, simply to 'Peru', this dense and very pure sample of copper mineralization is not only something we rarely see from any Peruvian occurrences, but it is very old too, accompanied by a fascinating old handwritten display-style German label, which mentions the name "Eckhardt" and possibly Lima, the capital city of Peru too. This style of label is identical to others we have seen which date to the late 1800s and perhaps with some detective work the identity of "Eckhardt" could be solved. The specimen itself, is an intergrowth of hackly metallic Native Copper and well-formed deep purple cubic Cuprite crystals. The Native Copper shows evidence of bending and grooves where a chisel has cut through the metal and the Cuprite has some broken, brighter red surfaces around the edges, with well-formed crystals within cavities, but is extremely richly crystallized for Peru. It is from the superb systematic collection assembled by the brothers Martin and Michael Günther (1951-2007 & 1956-2021).