Fluorite (beautiful ''phantom'' crystals)

Item Description

A beautiful and showy full-sized cabinet specimen from the Le Beix Mine in southern-central France. These specimens are fairly rare on the market, and it's a shame because they are not only gemmy and colorful, but they often show excellent internal ''phantoms''. This piece is loaded with sharp, well-formed, textbook cubic crystals measuring up to 2.4 cm on edge, which predominantly feature a glowingly rich blue color, but when the piece is backlit, you can see the exterior edges show a pale golden hue, and in some spots are actually colorless, and the lower central portion of the specimen features a pleasing purple hue. There is no matrix, so the light just pours through the piece, allowing the multiple colors and distinct ''phantom'' color zoning to show through beautifully. Very little damage, overall it's in great shape. Like many Fluorites, the color in this specimen looks best in sunlight, so the indoor photos/video do not look as good as the piece looks outside. A very impressive and simply gorgeous piece of this scarce material. This piece was mined circa late 1970s. If I had this one for sale on the shelf at a show, I would put a retail price of about $4,000 on it as the saturation of the blue color is better than most I've see from this locality, and it's a showy display specimen. From the collection of Richard ("Rich") A. Kosnar, the well-known mineral collector and dealer from Colorado (1946-2007). Rich loved classic minerals from Europe, and actually named his company Mineral Classics for this reason.