Pyroxmangite (ex Willard Wulff Collection)

Item Description

For a long time, this material was thought to be Rhodonite, but this is not the case. The first geologist to describe the material from the Sunnyside Mine had a background at Franklin, New Jersey, and simply assumed that this manganese silicate was Rhodonite. To this day, not a single piece of confirmed Rhodonite has been reported from this locality. Considering that Pyroxmangite is even rarer than Rhodonite, I think this is a wonderful opportunity to buy a superb sample of this hard to find material from a now defunct San Juan locality. Pyroxmangite is a fairly simple, yet fairly rare manganese silicate which is rarely found in such rich specimens as the Sunnyside mine in Colorado. This piece is an attractive specimen featuring, sharp, lustrous, micro pink crystals of Pyroxmangite with mionr sulfides, (Galena, Pyrite) on massive matrix. You don't see much of this material on the market, and good pieces are few and far between. Beautiful to view under the microscope! This specimen comes from the collection of Willard W. Wulff (1904-1998) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, a prominent figure and collector of Colorado minerals. Wulff was one of the founding members of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society in 1936. You can read Willard's bio on the Mineralogical Record website here ( http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1528 ).