Calcite

Item Description

A big showy impressive display specimen of Calcite from Mexico featuring a prominent, 9.2 cm, sharp, well-formed, translucent trigonal prismatic elongated crystal with a pale golden hue internally, surrounded by smaller Calcites of equal quality which range to virtually colorless in hue. Most of the crystals are terminated and in good condition, but there are some small areas of roughness, and obviously the base is contacted where it was separated from the pocket wall. The size, aesthetics and overall quality make it a very desirable piece for any fan of worldwide Calcite or Mexican minerals.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.