Rhodochrosite (classic material)

Item Description

Emma Mine Rhodochrosites are iconic specimens from the Butte District. Several decades ago, they were in the upper ranks for all Rhodochrosites from the United States. This piece is a wonderful hefty cabinet-sized piece that is loaded with dozens upon dozens of sharp, well-formed, saturated rose-pink colored rhombic crystals measuring up to about 7 mm on matrix. If you look closely, you can see the crystals have formed attractive almost "pagoda"-esque "stacked" clusters in certain areas, a rare style for the locality. Most of the Rhodos are in great shape, though minor imperfections can be seen in a few spots. A wonderful display specimen of this beloved and now rather hard to find material.
Formerly in the collection of Moe Leonardi, who was an assistant plant manager at the Searles Lake Mine in California.
Valued $5,000.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 3069; 14.1.1.4 MT.4. 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