Updated 1d ago

Cobaltocalcite

$1,200.00

$40.00 shipping
Seller offers an extended return window of up to 30 days
Ships from USA

With a stunning rich bubble-gum pink colour and really prominent large scalenohedral crystals, this cobalt-bearing variety of Calcite, known as Cobaltoan Calcite, from Mashamba West mine, in Kolwezi mining district, DR Congo presents really strongly as a very aesthetic well-balanced crystal group/bed. Although world-famous for having produced some of the world's best crystals of pink Cobaltoan Calcite, fine crystals are rare and this particular habit is extremely unusual. Small cabinet in size, the glassy, dark pink, complex stepped scalenohedral crystals are sat upon an eye-catching banded pale pink and cerise-pink bed of Cobaltoan Calcite seen in cross-section around the edges of the specimen base. The individual, glossy, scalenohedral Cobaltoan Calcite crystals exceptionally reach to 4 cm tall above the bed below, with beautiful detail upon their surfaces, covered in hundreds of smaller, scale-like, stepped crystal faces all the way up their length. Opaque pale pink at their base, the crystal's colour intensifies upwards, but towards their terminations their transparency/translucency and glassy lustre increases, resulting in a slightly paler colour. Several of the crystals have slightly cleaved tips, but remarkably this does not impinge on their showy appearance. There are very few places in the world where pink Cobaltoan Calcite is found and no other that produces scalenohedral crystals of this form, or size, making this an exceptionally high quality display specimen. Sparsely scattered upon most of the crystallized surfaces of the Cobaltoan Calcite are small dark brown to bronze, silky, spherical masses of the rare species Kolwezite - copper cobalt carbonate, but more prominent are larger (up to 6 mm across) crystallized masses showing relict crystal form, indicating that they are pseudomorphs after probable Chalcopyrite crystals.