Fluorite - classic 'ice cubes' style

Item Description

A jewel, these fluorites shocked the mineral world when they first came to the West in the early 1990s and still shock us to this day, for the large gemmy cubes and sharp formations of absolutely pure calcium fluorite. I remember one Russian museum associate telling me, this is fluorite the way that god and nature intended, pure calcium fluoride with none of the other junk that mixes with simple elements during most crystals' formation to create problems (or colors) in crystallization. They are clean, colorless, and pure in a literal sense! We were told that, even though we initially thought these were contemporary in the 1990s, most of them actually had been mined in the 1980s and stashed. Certainly, Dalnegorsk never produced such things since those days - not any that got out. This is a magnificent specimen and to many people, including Fran Allegra himself, it was the crown jewel of his collection and perhaps the most valuable specimen. This was purchased from a Russian named Vadim (I forget his last name) who used to set up a small room in the Executive Inn in the late 1990s. Vadim, who spoke no English, told me that he had owned it for years, and it was in his collection (I spoke conversational Russian at the time, and learned he came as a friend of the Fersman Museum people to cash out his longtime collection and retire more gracefully from whatever he had been doing). It was his own prized rock, and he showed it in a velvet-lined special box kept under his table in the room. I think this wsa in Tucson of 1999 or 2000, when Fran saw it and fell in love with it immediately! He had already decided to pursue a Dalnegorsk suite by then, and this was the crown jewel to get out of the way, so it must be had. He also did not have the money for it - it was expensive, even in the 1990s, and even dirty and direct from the Russian collector. As I spoke Russian, and we were friends, Fran came to me for help with negotiating how to buy the man's most expensive rock with no money and no language in common. Two days of negotiation commenced, during which Fran called his amazingly awesome mother-in-law for help (he is the only mineral collector I know whose spouse's mother gave him an annual gift for buying a good mineral each year at Tucson, to join the fun!). In the end, we were able to obtain the specimen for Fran with a combination of creative funding sources and money owed later through friends, and also a straight-out loan. He never regretted it. He loved it so much, he never sent it to the lab himself, for cleaning - and it was actually good enough, mine-run and with pocket dirt still in the cracks. Fran literally paced the halls for days, working out how to obtain this at the time, and he made it work, teaching me a lesson in persistence! However, after Fran's passing, it was sent to the laboratory for proper cleaning and now shows its full sparkle and clarity. The piece is nearly pristine - I would say miraculously so, given the time and place it came out. The large crystals reach 4.5 cm on edge and all of them are razor sharp with only minor edge contacts on the lower periphery, and one small and thin slice of restoration epoxy on a back corner (on the rightmost of the two top crystals, professional and invisible to the normal eye, only visible in UV light). It is good from any side, though - complete all around, 360 degrees. The photos and video will never convey the clarity and colorlessness properly - they cannot do it as well as the human eye. When you hold it in person, you just think only of ice cubes! Most people who visited Fran considered this one of the most important, and valuable, specimens in the collection. It was the most expensive mineral Fran purchased in the 1990s. You simply cannot buy a good one of this caliber at any price at any show by plan - they are not available. Valuations given have ranged from $25-50,000 based on smaller or lesser examples out in the market from this era, that are already priced near the same numbers.