These strange, spiky calcite crystals have a special place in my heart because it was one of the first "lot of new finds" mineral deals I ever did, back in the early 1990s. I bought the lot of them, almost without exception, from dealer Herb Obodda who brought them home with him from one of his many trips to Pakistan. One does not see many Calcites from Pakistan, let alone one that was found at the Skardu Airport where they found these during a runway extension! This piece hosts many sharp, silky, colorless/white elongated scalenohedral crystals of Calcite to 4.2 cm, and despite a few broken crystals and one clean invisible lock-fit repair, is in excellent condition. It was the biggest and most aesthetic cluster in the lot I bought from Herb at the time (now almost 30 years ago!) although there were some uglier plates that were technically bigger, including the bits of matrix. In any case, this really is one of the BEST examples of this material that I've seen for the size and in fact was one that I kept in my personal collection of calcites (which I collected and owned from 1985-2005, sold entire, and then mostly bought back some years later because I am a crazy person in a crazy collecting world). Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, this locality "is a domestic civil airport and military air base located in Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. It is connected with Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, and Gilgit, the provincial capital of Gilgit-Baltistan, through regular Pakistan International Airlines flights. It also serves as a Forward Operating Base of the Pakistan Air Force." A special calcite, from a special place - but it actually has such nice and different style, that it stands on its own merit as well.