Cobaltian Calcite

Unknown Owner

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A highly unusual calcite specimen showing a rich pink-red color due to cobalt, and from Germany! It is a quality I had not seen in any example of this for sale, only in dribs and drabs over the years. The piece is aesthetic and complete all around. In person it has a richer, darker toned color saturation. This is an old specimen from the Pearse Collection, Harvard University. See the Mineralogical Record's label archives: http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1144 for information on John Pearse, (1842-1914) of Pennsylvania. The site notes: while in Freiberg for study in 1865 he purchased a 5000-specimen collection of minerals, rocks and fossils from the Academy's mineral dealership, the Mineralien-Niederlage zu Freiberg. Pearse never added any specimens to his Freiberg mineral collection. It was sold by his son Langdon (an 1899 Harvard graduate) to the Harvard Mineralogical Museum for $275, and the specimens were distributed throughout the systematic collections and teaching collections. Exchanged from Harvard by a collector in the past.