Calcite (RARE locality specimen)

Item Description

A big showy and impressive specimen of Calcite from the Kaiser Wilhelm Mine in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Germany. A quick glance on mindat.org shows there are ZERO specimens of this material for comparison, so these must be notably hard to find. I personally cannot recall seeing one of them before, in any size. This wonderful near large cabinet sized piece is filled with gorgeous tapered scalenohedral crystals of Calcite measuring up to 3.7 cm long, with a gentle resinous luster, soft golden hue and good internal translucency. Some of the crystals have a coating of tiny sparkling Quartz crystals, creating a very pleasant effect. The Calcites show a hot pink fluorescence under 365 nm UV light. There are few contacts, so the piece is not pristine, but I think it's more than forgivable for such a large and striking example from this famous locality. The piece comes with a couple of old hand-written labels, including one from the collection of Thomas Gundermann. It's very difficult to put a fair market value on a piece of this material, since we've never had one for comparison, but if you collect Calcites or old German classics, this is something you're not likely to see again in any format, especially in this size anytime soon.
From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#75 D), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection for the foreseeable future through our various platforms.