Galena var. Johnstonite

$200.00

$40.00 shipping
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Tucson, Arizona, USA

7,543 for sale·132 sold

A small dense specimen of compact fine-grained Galena with added intrigue. Labels accompanying the specimen refer to it as being the variety Johnstonite but that is not recorded from the Arany Idka area in Hungary. There are two types of "Johnstonite", one relating to Vanadinite, the other Galena. The Galena version relates to a variety of Galena high in sulphur from Srebrna Góra in Poland, described by Carl Wilhelm von Haidinger in 1845. It is thought that the high sulphur could perhaps be due to admixed Anglesite. The oldest label accompanying this specimen is from Robert Max Wilke (1862-1946), who set up as a mineral dealer in California in 1906. He was renowned for his precise labelling. The specimen was purchased by the unrelated German collector Dr Hans-Jurgen Wilke (1925-2014) in 1991 from whom it went to Dr Eduard Lopatka in Austria.