This fabulous Ullmannite specimen from Masaloni mine, San Vito, Cagliari Province, Sardinia, Italy comes complete with an original label from Giovanni B. Traverso (1843-1914), who directed the Sarrabus silver mines in Sardinia for over 40 years from the late 1870s. His position within the mining community allowed him to assemble many fine collections of specimens that he gifted to museums in Italy and across Europe. Some of the world's finest crystals of Ullmannite - nickel antimony sulphide - have come from the Masaloni mine where, like this one, the bright silvery metallic cubic Ullmannite crystals are exposed from the surrounding Calcite using acid treatment. The Ullmannite crystals reach up to 3 or 4 mm in size with many well-formed smaller crystals coating the rock matrix at the edge of the Calcite vein. This large miniature to small cabinet specimen, collected pre-1914, is a really fine Sardinian, and indeed European classic.



