A gorgeous, sharp, cassiterite crystal with jet black color and breathtaking lustre for the species. This thing is so sharp and bright you can see your reflection from its major faces. For Brazil, such quality is incredibly rare, though has been reported occasionally. This is surely an older specimen, and was in the collection of Lawrence Conklin. The bottom is sawed where it was removed from matrix, though it sits well because of this. Sadly, the piece is repaired once, with the far 9mm or so of the most overhanging and exposed corner having been reattached. It is a good repair, not visible as it sits on the shelf and only seen with closer inspection, but still a repair that decreases value (I had estimated this at $2000 previously). Nevertheles, a highly important and rare, very showy, locality piece for this species

This extremely rare and important little crystal is approx 3mm in size. It was a gift from Harvard to the AMNH in the mid-1900s (label included) and one should be able to reasonably suppose that, since the type material was residing at Harvard, this crystal comes from the type material or at least the same pocket - or why bother to give it as a carefully catalogued gift to their colleague? Ex AMNH exchanged into the collection of dealer/collector Lawrence Conklin.

An exceedingly rare and old specimen (both label and specimen are numbered #295 in the American Museum acquisitions, dating to the mid-1800s!), of clinochlore from Russia. I Have never seen such a thing on the market�it is way beyond other examples of the species in size, really just unprecedented. The crystal has a metallic, unique maroon color to it. It seems to be completeon the front, contacted in back, and complete all around as well (the notch you see is contact, not a "bite" out of it). Ex AMNH exchanged into the collection of dealer/collector Lawrence Conklin. Thanks to Tim Blackwood who did some research and he did find a modern name of Poldnevaya village, Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), Ekaterinburgskaya (Sverdlovskaya) Oblast', Middle Urals, Urals Region, Russia as a locality given on Mindat.  On a hunch I did a Minday locality search for "Pold" and came up with the above locality.  It would appear that Polnevaya is a new spelling for Poldnewaja.  I believe the pronunciations would be the same.  Clinochlore isn't listed for the Mindat location, but I believe it to be correct. 

A neat boxed group of 4 calcite crystals, in a Riker mount. The crystals are very thin (a few mm) but show incredible elongation and complexity on their other axes of growth. This is a classic style from Acushnet, but rarely seen so well developed. The quarry is now inaccessible for specimens, and these are old pieces. Ernie Schilchter collected them on October 1, 1982, on the 10th level of the open quarry.

Once considered its own species, this sphaerosiderite is now considered to be a microcrystalline, botryoidal variety of siderite. It is classic and unique material, though, and comes at its best from this old mine in Romania. This specimen is complete all around, and is a gorgeous and rich example of both the species variety, and of the classic association from this particular mine. I have seen these pop up from time to time in old collections, but never one so good as this one.

This rich, display-sized specimen hosts a number of elongated, sharply crystallized vesuvianites to nearly 2 cm. These are classic, forest-green vesuvianite crystals from the Italian Piedmont. Nice clusters like this have tended to stay in Italy with the collectors, and we seldom see (at least in the US) anything really good. Unique compared to other locales, these are immediately recognizable classics.