Quartz (with ''phantoms'')

Item Description

The PC Mine in the northern part of Jefferson County, Montana is best-known for its fine quality Quartz specimens, particularly some excellent "Japan-Law" twins. The "PC" part of the name of the mine actually stands for "perfect crystal". This piece is a highly quality full cabinet-sized example hosting many very sharp, highly lustrous, GEMMY, prismatic hexagonal crystals measuring up to 5.0 cm, free of matrix. The crystals have a very gentle smoky hue, and are almost what I would call "Alpine"-quality. If you look closely, you can see very thin "phantoms" inside the crystals, which George describes on his label as "snow flake phantoms". I can't recall seeing many Quartz crystals from this mine with these particular "phantoms" and to find a piece of this size and quality with such wonderful, attractive crystals is a big deal.
This specimen originally came from Harvey (Pete) Knudsen, Professor Emeritus and former head of the Mining Engineering department of the School of Mines and Engineering at Montana Technological University. Pete owned/leased and worked the PC Mine for several years.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 8523; 210 MT.16. 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