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of Pala International/William Larson
This is the company collection of the well-known dealership responsible for bringing the Himalaya Mine to fame, Pala International-The Collector of Fallbrook, California. This collection was assembled starting in the late 1970s under the joint guidance of Bill Larson and Ed Swoboda initially. It began as an educational and investment-style reference collection of local San Diego County minerals, housed in the showroom of The Collector, the iconic store founded by Bill Larson and Ed Swoboda following their discovery of the Tourmaline Queen bluecap pocket in 1972. They went on to mine the Himalaya Mine, which Bill Larson continued to mine until closing it in 2002. By the late 1970's, Bill Larson had bought out Ed's ownership in the store and business, retaining and growing over the years this collection to fill a large trophy case that remained in the store on exhibit over the years.
When I moved to San Diego in 1995, this was the first County collection I saw. Seeing the Larson collection was the pilgrimage for advanced collectors visiting the hotbed of Southern California as far back as the 70's though, and this collection was right there through it all. The goal was to show, in a mix of sizes and species (and quality levels), a broad array of the mineral species occurring in San Diego County with emphasis on historic locales. Particular emphasis was placed on obtaining locality pieces from small pegmatite workings and unusual finds, and pieces from old museum collections: the kind of things that would inspire local collectors (and add value greater than the sum of the parts to this collection as a significant locality suite at the same time). I never thought this collection would be for sale and now I am proud to offer this historic collection here. My thanks to Bill Larson for his help in labelling and providing history on his specimens.
I have finally been able to get cleaned, prepped, and posted the second installment (another 50 specimens!) from my 2008 acquisition of this fine and large collection of San Diego County minerals. Stay tuned for update III, a final 50-60 specimens, by end of 2009.
PLEASE CONTINUE TO PAGE 4 TO SEE THE NEWLY ADDED PART III of this UPDATE (70 new specimens numbered PALA-300 and up).
PALA INTERNATIONAL COMPANY'S SAN DIEGO COUNTY locality collection!
PALA-101 - Schorl on Quartz - $ 3500 SOLD Fano Mine, near Anza, Cahuilla District, Riverside Co., California, USA large cabinet, 19.3 x 7.2 x 5.8 cm ex. William Larson
This is an extremely impressive specimen, visually, and quite unusual for the County for both its size and display. Schorls from San Diego are rare. Big ones, all the more so. This is a 5.5-inch-long (14cm), doubly-terminated schorl, perched on a doubly-terminated quartz . The whole cluster is a floater, complete all around and fully terminated all around. It is a miracle it survived at all, a few repairs on the stalk or not (repaired 3x). Larson ranked this as one of the top schorls from the County, and certainly for a matrix piece it presents dramatically. Other than the repairs themselves, it is pristine and undamaged elsewhere
PALA-102 - Aquamarine - $ 3500 SOLD Audrey Lynn claim, San Diego County, California, USA miniature, 5.2 x 3.8 x 3.1 cm ex. William Larson
A beautiful, very glassy, gemmy aquamarine crystal from this small claim. At 86 grams, we are confident that this is one of the larger and finer aquamarines recovered from the locality. It always held a valued place in the collection, certainly. The crystal has a small bit of albite attached in back, and some contact along the left side, but is undamaged otherwise. For San Deigo, where aquamarine is rare, this is a significant crystal.
PALA-103 - Morganite on Cleavelandite - $ 15000 SOLD White Queen Mine, Pala, San Diego Co., California, USA small cabinet, 7.0 x 5.7 x 3.7 cm ex. William Larson
This is an adorable small cab with extremely good aesthetics, that is an old specimen actually pictured in the mainstream art book: Tiffany - 150 years of gems and jewelry. The crystals have the typical matte finish on upper faces and glassy, gemmy windows into the hexagonal faces. The major crystal is 3.7 x 2.5 x 2 cm in size, and is so gemmy you can see right through it to the albite underneath. Few are so bright, internally! In fact, the matrix of crystallized albite is also sparkling and bright, making for good contrast.Nearly pristine, this major crystal has just one ding on a back face. It is hard to convey in the photos that this is NOT the typical pale pink either, but a rather richly hued crystal for the locality. Massive morganite underlays the whole specimen, which can be seen from the bottom. A superb, rare, locality specimen from one of the most important finds in the County. Mined by norm Dawson in the 1960's, this was sold to Dr. Gerald Clark's collection. In the 1980's Gerry retired and moved to Fallbrook where he teased Bill Larson with this specimen. When Tiffany had their 150th anniversary, Peter Schneirla of that company borrowed several of Bill Larson's important gem crystal pieces from the historic County mines for 6 months display at the Tiffany's headquarters in NYC, and several pieces were shown in their commemorative book to link the company to the historic gem mining of San Diego and the naming of the species Kunzite and Morganite from the region.
PALA-104 - Morganite - $ 12500 Himalaya Mine, Pala, San Diego Co., California, USA cabinet, 11.7 x 9.7 x 4.4 cm ex. William Larson
At 671 grams, this translucent, very richly-colored pink morganite is certainly among the larger single morganite crystals to come from the County as a whole. It is visually impressive, and very colorful for a morganite from any US locale, for that matter. It is a floater, completely terminated on much of the backside if admittedly rough in texture there. It is not quite pristine, but the few spots of edge wear are not so distracting either. It has one very clean, well-done repair in the middle. However, what is more important than the size and obvious color appeal is to realize that it is a VERY rare survivor from the era in which morganite was named in honor of his patron JP Morgan, by the gret gemologist Kunz. He was at the time working for Tiffany on location in San Diego, and buying up the various gem crystals produced by the Himalaya. Bill Larson thinks this came out prior to 1910. It was one of two famous specimens bequeathed to Cal Tech by the wealthy collector and industrialist TW Warner Jr. from his personal collection (regarded at the time as the single most significant San Diego collection assembled in the era). How many survive as crystals , instead of gems now? Probably, not very many. Bill Larson had told me that although he knew of one better, and a rumour of another, this was always the best Himalaya mine morganite he could go after and in the end, obtained it by exchange. He regarded it as a core specimen in the collection, not just for the color, but even more for its historic import to the mine and the species. Fine morganites of this size were not found agai at the Himalaya in later years despite much searching!
PALA-105 - Morganite - $ 32000 Vandenburg (Vanderberg) Mine, Hiriart Mountain, Pala, San Diego Co., California, USA large cabinet, 18.2 x 11.8 x 11.4 cm ex. William Larson
This several-kilo specimen has a HUGE 9 x 8 x 7.5-cm morganite crystal perched atop a matrix of quartz and cleavelandite. It is one of the most impressive large and dramatic County pieces I have laid hands on, and was a cornerstone of the Larson/Pala collection case. The thing GLOWS with color more intense and strong than any other San Diego morganite I have seenin person, especially when backlit. When found , it was the size of a basketball and it remained so for nearly 70 years until now, reduced to a more manageable size by trimming (i have a photo, to prove i did the right thing - it needed it!). Even ungainly large and untrimmed/uncleaned, it was a prized specimen in several major collections and a museum. This specimen was piece #2 in the collection of Arch Oboler, a major Los Angeles area collector of the early-1900s who was a writer for radio shows like the Shadow; and built a collection of uniformly fine and important specimens. You can read more about him at this link on the Mineralogical Record Archives: http://www.mineralogicalrecord.com/labels.asp?colid=791. Today , very few documented specimens from this private collection turn up on the market. His collection was sold to the famous dealer Martin Ehrmann in 1968, who sold it on to Marion Stuart, the heiress to the Carnation milk fortune (her rather early number, 358, shown on her card). She owned the piece for over 30 years, until about 2001 when the collection was sold to Wayne Thompson. During that time, it was on longterm loan as a display specimen to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. When the collection sold, it was one of Larson's first choices and went immediately into his own San Diego County collection. Thus in what is probably over 60 years since it was mined, it has had only 3 owners and been in a museum for some chunk of that time, as well.
PALA-107 - Tantalite with Morganite - $ 900 Elizabeth R. Mine, Chief Mountain, Pala District, San Diego Co., California, USA cabinet, 11.3 x 7.0 x 5.6 cm ex. William Larson
A surprising, very rare specimen featuring a very sharp, fine , 2-cm tantalite crystal in matrix with associated lepidolite and morganite. Tantalite crystals are rare, and of this quality extremely rare, from the County. The morganite is a bous - for free - as its at the other end of the specimen. For me, the treasure here is all the tantalite. , an uncommon county species highly desired from here. I am very tempted to trim the specimen to two pieces, a nice small cab tantalite and a nice small cab with a morganite.
PALA-108 - Tourmaline on Quartz - $ 400 Elizabeth R. mine, Pala, San Diego County , California, USA cabinet, 10.0 x 5.3 x 2.7 cm ex. William Larson
Nice locality piece! It has elongated dark tourmalines attached to a vertical quartz crystal cluster. Minor damage, but overall interesting and aesthetic
PALA-109 - Aquamarine - $ 3000 SOLD Katerina Mine, Pala District, San Diego Co., California, USA miniature, 4.8 x 4.7 x 4.0 cm ex. William Larson
A fat, robust aquamarine crystal with excellent pastel blue color, and a very good lustre to it. Large, sharp aquamarines are just not that common in the County. For whatever reason, we get tourmalines aplenty and beryls when they come tend to be morganite. True aquas, of any quality, are exceedingly rare in San Diego! This is , thus, a fairly important crystal, and it displays well on its base with impact beyond its size. This mine is known for quartz more than for beryl, as well.
PALA-110 - Aquamarine - $ 1250 Fano Mine, near Temecula, Riverside County, California, USA miniature, 5.0 x 2.3 x 1.8 cm ex. William Larson
A rare oldtimer, this probably dates to the early 1900s and the era when gem miners prospected all over the mountains of San Diego and Riverside for tourmaline and beryl. Bill Larson repatriated it from a European collection where it had been all that time, and it is from an unknown locality in what is today a very developed suburb. The crystal is a little rough on the edges due to solution effects in situ and ot to damage from mechanical wear, but it IS complete, and terminated, and shows nicely on display. NOTE I HAVE SHOWN THIS TO PEOPLE FAMILIAR WITH THE SD AREA PEGMATITES AND the consensus is that it is most likely from the Fano/Ware Mine pegmatite, labelled for the nearest larger city at that time.
PALA-111 - Morganite with Muscovite - $ 1800 SOLD Little Three Mine, Ramona District, San Diego Co., California, USA small cabinet, 7.4 x 6.6 x 4.5 cm ex. William Larson
A strange, etched, organic-looking morganite crystal with a hexagonal termination remaining atop the elongated, etched body. It has a pale pink color, and is very attractive, if unusual, in person. It shows crystal form, still, though is overall stretched and weird in appearance. Accents of muscovite are scattered over it. It is a floater.
PALA-144 - Kunzite in matrix - $ 20000 Anita Mine, Hiriart Hill, Pala District, San Diego Co., California, USA large cabinet, 17 x 2 x 12.5 x 7.4 cm ex. William Larson
This is a spectacular display piece, museum sized and of high quality, showcasing a rare large kunzite IN MATRIX from the county. The undamaged crystal has a rich pink color, and is DOUBLY-terminated, complete at both ends. The crystal is not broken off from or repaired onto its matrix - rather, it was very , very carefully excavated to leave a stable anchorage behind it. It measures 18 x 5 x 2 cm in size and is complete. There is a thin crack in the middle, but the matrix stably holds it together. In person, it is more clearly seen how sharp the leftmost termination is, in particular. The color is excellent,particularly for the mine and the County in general. The style and the matrix together are uniquye - it is obviously not from the common places we see , Brazil or Afghanistan. And, as it is in matrix, this has to rank highly among all kunzite found here, from several localities, over the years since the early 1900s when it was found in San Diego and named in honor of the gemologist GF Kunz. Many people do not realize that, yes, San Diego was the type lcoale for kunzite! But, specimens of this magnitude do not come up often, and so its easy to forget that bit of history in light of the contemporary production from Afghanistan and Brazil. This is the rare county piece, though, that compares admirably to ANYTHING mother nature has produced elsewhere, AND comes from the USA. I rank it a major specimen for any collector of gem crystals or US classics in this size range. NOTE: this is from a private collection in Germamny which was broken up several years ago, and not from the Larson/PALA collection, though it fit well within this update to include it here.
PALA-112 - Morganite - $ 600 SOLD King Mine, Tourmaline Queen Mountain, Pala District, San Diego Co., California, USA miniature, 3.7 x 2.7 x 1.6 cm ex. William Larson
A very old , very sharp morganite crystal that makes for a cute small miniature. It is unusually gemmy and well-formed, for this locality, complete save s bit of damage at the top-right-rear of the termination. A small hint of purple lepidolite included in the base narrows the mine origin to the Pala region, correspoding with the old labels stating "Pala" as locality. Bill then narrowed it down to King Mine. This was in the Scott Williams collection by 1958. 26 grams
PALA-113 - Aquamarine on Feldspar - $ 1250 Audrey Lynn Mine, Little Cahuilla Mtn., Riverside county, California, USA miniature, 5.2 x 4.5 x 4.2 cm ex. William Larson
A very rare specimen, consisting of a matrix aquamarine from this small pegmatite. The crystal is highly lustrous and has beautiful surface ripplings on the termination. It is 2.7 x 2.5 x 2.5 cm in size. It is repaired, but as these are very rare, and it displays well, i can forgive that detraction at a fair price.
PALA-114 - Calcite - $ 300 Hilton Deposit, Anza Borrego Desert, San Diego County, California, USA miniature, 5.5 x 5.5 x 3.5 cm ex. William Larson
A very sharp array of bladed calcite crystals, in an unusually displayable specimen for this locality which usually produces calcite in jumbly masses. Translucent
PALA-115 - Topaz - $ 250 SOLD Little Three Mine, Ramona District, San Diego Co., California, USA miniature, 3.0 x 2.6 x 2.4 cm ex. William Larson
A sharp, exceedingly gemmy , classic blue topaz crystal from this mine which is reknowned for them. Hard to find these days, though. This crystal displays very well, though has a little bit of damage to the sides (or it would be $1000)
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