Name: Pink Fluorite on Arsenopyrite
Brand: The Arkenstone
Price: 9000 USD
Availability: InStock

Pink Fluorite on Arsenopyrite

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From early finds at the Huanggang mines, this is a one-off specimen I bought in China in those early years when the mine started spurting out an amazing variety of species and combinations! This fluorite specimen looks like a pink fluorite PacMan caught eating an arsenopyrite octahedron! However, that is not the case - it is rather a unique encapsulation and intergrowth of the two species. This would have been mined circa 2010 and with me by 2012, as I had it by the time of my China collection exhibition in Tucson in 2013. The matrix is composed entirely of bright, mirror-like crystals of Arsenopyrite. Surmounting and balanced atop the piece sits a razor sharp pink fluorite octahedron enclosing and included by arsenopyrite that somehow shows an octahedral shape in the inclusion (perhaps the arsenopyrite enclosed a previous fluorite octo, now a phantom within?). The fluorite is sharp and gemmy, to 4 cm on longest edge and 4.5 cm bottom tip to top corner. It looks as if the pink fluorite octo is enveloping a metallic octahedron within... a very unusual style we have never seen again (in over 60 trips to China and 20 years of looking)! The architecture and aesthetics of this cabinet specimen are simply remarkable, as the photos show. A truly almost- unique specimen, in my own China collection since 2012. Why do we say "almost unique?" At the time, in 2013, I had one specimen with two crystals and it was awkward to display, with each crystal pointing out in a different direction so that the balance was off as a whole. I have since trimmed it. This is one of the two trims; the other being shown here on our site: https://www.irocks.com/minerals/specimen/47970. The other specimen was larger (and I heard it had since been trimmed down again) but this has the sharper inclusion to my eye. Hence, I had kept this one until now (summer 2024), for over a decade in my own Chinese minerals collection. It remains unique, but I have to let go some duplication and I love fluorite too much... don't we all?