Mimetite (Type Locality, dated 1806 ex. Royal Cabinet) - image 1

Mimetite (Type Locality, dated 1806 ex. Royal Cabinet) - image 2

Mimetite (Type Locality, dated 1806 ex. Royal Cabinet) - image 3

Mimetite (Type Locality, dated 1806 ex. Royal Cabinet) - image 4

Mimetite (Type Locality, dated 1806 ex. Royal Cabinet)

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Mimetites from the Type Locality in the Erzgebirge, Saxony, Germany are one of those old classics that you almost never see for sale and most people will never even hold in their lives as a collector. Really, they only come out of old museums, and such is the history for many of Kay Robertson's pieces. This well-terminated, tabular crystal has very good luster and a rich, yellow-orange color. The stunning, centered, sharp crystal is 11mm across. The major find here dates to the early 1800s, and shockingly really is the TYPE LOCALITY for Mimetite - a common species today from only a few other locales, but generally rare in Europe at the time. This is an aesthetic, classic specimen with a great 1806 label from the Vienna Natural History Museum (at the time, the "Royal Imperial Mineral Cabinet"). It is fitting that this was piece #10,000 in Kay's collection (purchased in Tucson in 1983 from van Scriver). It is a fine display specimen and was a centerpiece in her special drawers of top German materials. As to the scientific naming mess, briefly these were classified as Clinomimetite, but the nomenclature was changed back to Mimetite 20 years later. MINDAT: named clinomimetite in 1991 by Yongshan Dai, John M. Hughes, and Paul Brian Moore for its monoCLINic structure and chemical identity with mimetite. Renamed by Pasero et al. (2010) as a polymorph of Mimetite referred to now as Mimetite-M. To me as a collector, that all makes little sense for the back and forth - CLINO sounded reasonable. It is nevertheless, the oldest known confirmed mimetite find!