Fluorite with Calcite - image 1
Fluorite with Calcite - image 2

Fluorite with Calcite

Unknown Owner
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This is an old and very distinct style form the heyday of the Yaogangxian Mine, in the late 1990s through early 2000s, when these sharp and deeply colored purple ice cubes came out. It dates to a time, when relatively few fine specimens came out undamaged and intact. I later obtained it from the Chinese collection of Dr. Steve Smale in Berkeley. Then, I personally carried this gorgeous specimen out of Steve Smale's home after a deal, and down the road to Jack Halpern's where he took it the next day. So it was in not only one, but both of the most prestigious and respected collections of the Bay Area (note that Jack, in a slip of the moment, wrote quartz on the label but it is indeed little blades of white calcite atop and the card matches the piece). It is shockingly sharp and well-defined, and leaps out in a case.

Product details

Species
Calcite, FluoriteAbout Calcite →
SizeSmall Cabinet
Dimensions6.0 x 4.2 x 3.5 cm
Added on10/23/2024
Locality
China, Hunan, Yaogangxian MineRegional guide →

Known provenance

DateCollectorAcquisition price
08/2024Unknown OwnerNot disclosed
—The ArkenstoneNot disclosed

Learn more

Calcite
Mineral guide
Learn about Calcite
diverse shapes, colors, and optical quirks; widely available yet scarce elite pieces from Elmwood and Charcas drive collecting value and display.
Calcite
Regional guide
Calcite from Yaogangxian Mine, China
from the Yaogangxian Mine is not merely an accessory carbonate on famous Chinese fluorites; at its best it is one of the visual signatures of the locality. Collectors most often encounter it as crisp white to pale pink “poker-chip” aggregates, bladed rosettes, stacked pagoda-like sprays, steep scalenohedra, or flattened rhombohedral groups perched on fluorite, quartz, ferberite, scheelite, muscovite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and other Yaogangxian species. The appeal lies in contrast: delicate, pearly calcite set against glassy purple or blue-green fluorite; pink manganese-bearing calcite on sparkling quartz; or a single water-clear calcite twin rising from metallic black ferberite.