#Colorado Crystal Find.
6 messages in this thread
Hi Doug,
There was a very short item on the news Wednesday? night on Denver's ABC
affiliate. Someone found a very large crystal claimed to be "priceless". A
picture was shown on TV: it appeared rather deep red, very translucent, and
rhombohedral. I think the report said it was found in an abandoned mine in
Colorado. It was donated to the Denver Natural History museum, I think.
Having seen nothing about this in either of Denver's newspapers the past two
days, I decided to join the Geology forum to see if I could find something on
this. I don't see anything; hasn't there been anything on this?
That crystal really looked beautiful on TV. I would guess it was
Rhodochrosite, but the TV report didn't say.
Bill.
Hi, Bill
> Someone found a very large crystal claimed to be "priceless". A picture was
> shown on TV: it appeared rather deep red, very translucent, and
> rhombohedral.
PMFJI, but your description sounds a lot like one of the Rhodochrosite
specimens that have come out of the Sweet Home mine in the last year or two.
Rhombs 2+ inches on a black matrix sprinkled with several other crystal
varieties. Lanny and I saw one of those in a local private collection recently
(well… last May). It was breathtaking (as was the rest of the collection
<g>). As I recall, the owner claimed that the sister specimen had been donated
to the Denver museum.
Cheers, Guy/OR
Hi Guy,
Thank-you for the info. The TV report did not mention what mineral the
specimen was, so I was looking for someone to tell me. My Rhodochrosite guess
was not "wild", but neither would I have called it "educated". But it was
lucky.
Were any additional Rhodochrosite specimens brought out of the mine?
Bill.
That must be it Guy,
Bryan Lees (The Collectors Edge, Golden, CO) has been mining (still is)
rhodochrosites in the Sweet Home Mine, Alma, CO for a couple of years now. He
always has a good show of them at the Denver and Tucson Shows. The one we saw
at the Rice's in May, and the "sister" specimen were two of the biggest
specimens (asking price was over $250,000 each–don't know what was actually
paid.
Incidentally, they have not had much luck during the last year–a lot of mining
and not much finding of cavities. Apparently, they did hit one really good
cavity in August.
Lanny
Might this be the wulfenite crystals from the Red Cloud mine in Arizona?
The September issue of Rock & Gem has a nice article about them.
-Russ
Hi, Bill–
Welcome to the forum!
The Sweet Home mine (Alma Ata is my memory of either an old name or the nearest
town) in CO has in the last few years been operated to produce mineral
specimens, mainly of rhodochrosite.
At Tucson 1993 and Denver 1993, they had on exhibit a couple of fantastic
specimens, well-formed rhombohedra of deep red rhodochrosite up to maybe 4" on
a side on white-coated plates of matrix.
These seem a good guess for your museum donation.
–Doug