Calcite

$950.00

$40.00 shipping
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Although Mashamba West mine, in Kolwezi mining district, DR Congo is famous for the world's best crystals of pink Cobaltoan Calcite, fine crystals are rare and have been seen in several different habits. This miniature specimen is particularly attractive in that its stunning, extremely glassy dark pink, complex stepped scalenohedral crystals are sat upon an even more flamboyant banded pale pink and cerise-pink bed of Cobaltoan Calcite seen in cross-section around the edges of the specimen base. The individual scalenohedral Cobaltoan Calcite crystals reach 4.5 cm tall in their full length, but are generally 3 and 2.5 cm tall in the showiest, glossy section rising up above the main bed of Cobaltoan Calcite. The crystals are beautifully detailed upon their surfaces, covered in hundreds of smaller, scale-like, stepped crystal faces all the way up its length. Opaque pale pink at their base, the crystal's colour intensifies upwards, towards their terminations, as does their transparency/translucency and glassy lustre. 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 miniature. 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. Down one side of the main two Cobaltoan Calcite crystals the Kolwezite forms larger masses (to 3 to 4 mm across) showing a relict crystal form, indicating that they are pseudomorphs after probable Chalcopyrite crystals. A really high class, pretty crystallized miniature of Cobaltoan Calcite from the DR Congo.