Babingtonite on Prehnite

Unknown Owner

Help improve this recordNo owner is registered for this specimen yet. If it's yours or you know more about it, you can add the owner, provenance, publications and other details.

Very nearly resembling stalactite growth, an extended matrix of chlorite is totally covered with intergrown crystals of tabular, lustrous, babingtonite, to 3.0 cm in length. The piece shows well both vertically AND horizontally. The luster and stark black color are excellent quality and there is no damage to the display face (only some contact at the lower-rear of the piece as I would display it). THIS IS A very RICHLY CRYSTALLIZED SPECIMEN for the price which any advanced collector would have happily paid many more thousands of dollars to own were it from the old US locales where a very similar association has formed - and it would be amazingly rich from those old locales, based on any previous standard. Probably a $5000-7500 piece is from the US ? Some associated crystals of colorless quartz to, .6 cm in length are in turn covered by minute babingtonite crystals. luster on these crystals is high, and the faces are all sharp and unetched or discolored as with some babingtonite from this locality. These remarkable specimens come out of a very small, previously insignificant quarry that, according to MINDAT, is simply worked by the local farmers.