Calcite (Heart Twin)

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One of the true treasures of the English mineral classics of the 1800s was the famous heart twins, which came out of several mines in the Egremont mining area in the 1860s through dealer Richard Talling who priced them like gold and received complaints form his many wealthy customers about the pricing at the time - see old ads as noted in the book, The Sparry Garniture). This was in the Smithsonian, by way of the famous collection of Carl Bosch, by the early 1900s. For those who have seen large examples of the classic English heart twins all your collecting lives, like myself, and wondered why so few thumbnail examples exist, you are not alone. I once asked Lindey greenbank and he proposed that miners saw no value in keeping small things when they could take out big juicy crystals, and in fact fine thumbnails were not thought to have a lot of value at the time in general, particularly by the miners. So, collectors today have generally 2-4 inch heart twins as treasures from this time in the mid 1800s, when they came out; and few thumbnails were recovered in the first place. This is a truly exceptional and well developed, classic English heart twin crystal, 2.2 x 2.0 x 1.6 cm and transparent. It has exquisite luster, gemminess, and form. I cannot recall the last time I saw such a fine thumbnail example of this mid-1800s classic. Note that most attributions for these are either to the Bigrigg Mine or the Gilfoot Mine, and they probably connect underground. We have chosen to simply label this as Egremont since the exact origin tunnel is lost to history.