Calcite

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Mineral guide

Learn about Calcite

diverse shapes, colors, and optical quirks; widely available yet scarce elite pieces from Elmwood and Charcas drive collecting value and display.

Regional guide

Calcite from Yaogangxian Mine, China

from the Yaogangxian Mine is not merely an accessory carbonate on famous Chinese fluorites; at its best it is one of the visual signatures of the locality. Collectors most often encounter it as crisp white to pale pink “poker-chip” aggregates, bladed rosettes, stacked pagoda-like sprays, steep scalenohedra, or flattened rhombohedral groups perched on fluorite, quartz, ferberite, scheelite, muscovite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and other Yaogangxian species. The appeal lies in contrast: delicate, pearly calcite set against glassy purple or blue-green fluorite; pink manganese-bearing calcite on sparkling quartz; or a single water-clear calcite twin rising from metallic black ferberite.