Fluorapatite and Albite with Cubanite - image 1

Fluorapatite and Albite with Cubanite - image 3

Fluorapatite and Albite with Cubanite

$2,500.00

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A rare, interesting, and fine combination specimen from the Morro Velho Gold Mine of Brazil. This is an old location known for a complex group of minerals, all found long ago and now considered classics of the mid-late 1900s Golden Age of mineral collecting. Specimens like this, we are told, generally date to the 1960s-1970s. This fine small cabinet specimen is dominated by two, gemmy, glassy, hexagonal, light pastel-pink Fluorapatite crystals with some white Albite, tan Siderite and rusty-bronze Cubanite and Pyrrhotites (it is difficult to distinguish easily at first glance, but they both look pretty and metallic). The Fluorapatite crystals are tabular with the largest one measuring 4 cm across and is an aggregate of of several, translucent to transparent pinkish crystals in tight parallel growth that are transparent at the edges. The other Fluorapatite crystal is growing almost perpendicular to the first and is turbid in the center with a gemmy periphery and it measures 2.3 cm across. The Apatites are growing on a bed of white Albite crystals and there are two larger, snow-white and lustrous Albite crystals adjacent to the Aptites that measure 3.3 and 3.7 cm in maximum dimension. Numerous, pseudohexagonal Cubanite plates to 4 mm are scattered about the piece and they have an orange-bronze color due to some slight oxidation. There are also a few lustrous, glassy, colorless, disc-shaped Siderite crystals to 1.5 cm on one side. From legendary Brazilian dealer Alvaro Lucio's personal collection; he visited and collected at this locality on occasion.