Pyrrhotite with Quartz (ex Washington Roebling - Smithsonian Collection)

Item Description

The famous Stari Trg Mine is the central mine at Trepca and has produced some amazing display specimens over the years. This locality is well-known for its beautiful sulfides and even has produced some impressive pieces of phosphates like Vivianite and Ludlamite. This piece is a great old historic specimen featuring sharp, well-formed, beautiful bronze colored, pseudohexagonal (monoclinic) groups of Pyrrhotite measuring up to 2.2 cm associated with colorless gem Quartz on matrix. There are a few bruises here and there, but that's par for the course with older material from Trepca. The most significant aspect of this piece is the fact that it is accompanied by an old label from the Smithsonian from the collection of Washington Augustus Roebling. Along with being one of the preeminent mineral collectors in the United States of his time, Roebling was also a colonel in the US Army during the Civil War, and a civil engineer who supervised the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. He assembled a very impressive mineral collections (16,000 specimens), which was donated to the Smithsonian Institution after this death. The specimen is priced at $1,250 in the inventory.