This is a way beyond normal quality, stunning example of intergrown, splendent, silvery-white crystals of arsenopyrite. They reach to 4.5 cm in length. As it so happened, most of the crystals are also doubly terminated and this is just one of the finest arsenopyrite miniatures I can imagine, competing even with the best of Chinese material which has come out in abundance in recent years. There is a subtle curvature to the crystals in this specimen, and a sharper point at the termination, that together makes it stand out from Chinese material

A highly unusual calcite specimen showing a rich pink-red color due to cobalt, and from Germany! It is a quality I had not seen in any example of this for sale, only in dribs and drabs over the years. The piece is aesthetic and complete all around. In person it has a richer, darker toned color saturation. This is an old specimen from the Pearse Collection, Harvard University. See the Mineralogical Record's label archives: http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1144 for information on John Pearse, (1842-1914) of Pennsylvania. The site notes: while in Freiberg for study in 1865 he purchased a 5000-specimen collection of minerals, rocks and fossils from the Academy's mineral dealership, the Mineralien-Niederlage zu Freiberg. Pearse never added any specimens to his Freiberg mineral collection. It was sold by his son Langdon (an 1899 Harvard graduate) to the Harvard Mineralogical Museum for $275, and the specimens were distributed throughout the systematic collections and teaching collections. Exchanged from Harvard by a collector in the past.