Acanthite with Amethyst

Unknown Owner

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Acanthite, a silver sulphide, is the low temperature form of Argentite, exiting at temperatures below 177 deg. C. From Banská Štiavnica (Schemnitz) in the Banská Bystrica Region of Slovakia, this small cabinet specimen forms several clusters of tiny, sub-millimetre crystals, all tightly grouped together over a thin yet strong plate of dark grey massive Quartz. These are surrounded by pale lilac Amethyst crystals in clusters of between 1 and 3 cm across. The individual Amethyst crystals average 2 mm in length and also occur with terminated milky Quartz crystals. The specimen is accompanied with two previous labels, both labelled as Stephanite with Amethyst. Someone with considerably more expertise than me in the silver sulphide and sulphosalt department has relabelled this as Acanthite.\n