This is a striking piece with INTENSE COLOR, perhaps the best color I can recall seeing for sheer color saturation, in liroconite. The color is unique too - not another mineral like it. Specimens like this would date to around 1840-1860 primarily, and are hard to get today in ANY size. This happens to be a superb thumbnail. From the thumbnail collection of Dr Fred Pough, former AMNH curator and well known author of the Field Guide to Minerals. The previous collector got it directly from Pough, who said that he in turn got it from Sir Arthur Russell (although no label survives)