This is truly an amazing adularia specimen and I DO NOT normally get excited about this species. Most Swiss adularia is dull and matte in lustre but this one has a surface like glass, and is highly reflective and attractive. I like the way the large crystal is perched aesthetically on a series of smaller adularia crystals. The luster is superb, the crystals show excellent translucence, and the color is pearlescent. In addition, there are some pearlescent 1 cm stilbite crystals perched on the adularia, which is a neat combo! Also, it is ex. Asselborn collection. He had it for many years and valued it highly. This is just a superior piece from a classic and important locality. I know this SEEMS expensive for a boring old adularia but it is really that good...not just another alpine rock, per se.

Although cavansite is now an all too-common species, with specimens everywhere (even being imported to China and resold as "Chinese cavansite~!), I love the stuff. It is just so uniquely gorgeous. This is an older style, from finds of a type we have not seen since the early 2000's, showing isolated clusters on white stilbite. This piece is particularly good because of the size, rolling 3-dimensionality, and lack of damage. So, despite the "common" nature of the species now, this piece stands out from the crowd to my eye, and always has. Frankly, it looks like it was faked by gluing the balls on - but this is, luckily, not the case. Joe Budd photos

While cavansite is common enough, truly great, top-top-percentile specimens that stand out to my eyes are actually very uncommon. Most cavansite is more or less the same style, in variations. This piece, though, has a gorgeous cluster of the richest, sparkliest blue cavansite you could ask for, just sitting perched atop an elegant mound of stilbite. It is perfect and pristine, complete all around - both the cavansite cluster itself, and the matrix knoll. It GLOWS with sparkle and has the mos tintense color saturation - again, hard to convey both in a photo at full intensity. Lastly, the cavansite is framed by two large stilbites, among the larger stilbite blades I have seen with any cavansite, ever. I know it is hard to gauge such subltleties of quality in 2-dimensional photos, but this really IS better than the rest in a measurable and notable sense to the trained eye that has glazed over from seeing so many thousands of cavansites over the years. Ken Roberts has always been known for his exceptional aesthetic taste in specimens, and I had seen this in his collection for years. When he broke up the remainder of the collection at Tucson 2012, this was one I had to go after. Joe Budd Photos.