Quartz var: Amethyst (rare multi-scepter specimen)

Item Description

The Boulder Batholith is a famous pegmatite region that lies only about 15-20 miles southeast of Butte, and has produced some beautiful display specimen of Quartz, and various other species over the years. This particular specimen is from the Pohndorf Mine on Toll Mountain, a well-known locality for attractive Amethyst scepters. The piece hosts a pair of scepter habit crystals showing light purple hues on the terminations, which grade into soft smoky and virtually colorless Quartz hues throughout. The smaller scepter is flaring off the larger one at nearly a 45-degree angle, the create a showy overall specimen. In my experience, it's quite rare to find TWO scepters on the same specimen from the Pohndorf Mine, the vast majority of specimens only feature a single scepter crystal. There are some small imperfections on the piece, so it's not completely pristine, but it's still an eye-catching specimen of this classic, and frankly fairly hard to find material. The entry on mindat.org states that this particular locality has been reclaimed, so we likely will never see any specimens from the Pohndorf Mine again.
The piece was originally in the collection of Steven Chamberlain.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 2058; 210MT1. George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/george-loud for more information