3.9" Cubic Fluorite Crystals on Sphalerite - Elmwood Mine

This is a beautiful specimen of fluorescent, cubic fluorite crystals on a mass of metallic black/red sphalerite. The fluorite contains deep purple coloration throughout all of the crystals, while still maintaining nice translucence. There is some minor breakage to a couple edges of the cubes. It comes with an acrylic display stand.

The Elmwood Mine is a zinc mine in Carthage, Tennessee that opened in 1969. It then closed for many years, only to be reopened in 2010. It has produced many world class specimens of fluorite, calcite, barite, and galena over the years. Specimens used to be plentiful as miners were allowed to recover specimens, but collecting is strictly prohibited by the new mine owners. They've gone to great lengths to prevent the mining of specimens, including blasting crystal pockets or filling them with slurry.


Sphalerite is a part of the sulfide group and typically exhibits a grey/black appearance due to high concentrations of impurities. In its purest state, sphalerite's chemical composition is ZnS, and can display a gemmy transparent light tan/yellow color. This is one of the few minerals that can form crystals ranging anywhere between gemmy and transparent to opaque and metallic-like. Opaque or cloudy sphalerite tends to be most abundant since iron easily replaces zinc in the process of formation.

Fluorite is a halide mineral comprised of calcium and fluorine, CaF2. The word fluorite is from the Latin fluo-, which means "to flow". In 1852 fluorite gave its name to the phenomenon known as fluorescence, or the property of fluorite to glow a different color depending upon the bandwidth of the ultraviolet light it is exposed to. Fluorite occurs commonly in cubic, octahedral, and dodecahedral crystals in many different colors. These colors range from colorless and completely transparent to yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, or black. Purples and greens tend to be the most common colors seen, and colorless, pink, and black are the rarest.
SOLD
DETAILS
SPECIES
Fluorite & Sphalerite
LOCATION
Elmwood Mine, Carthage, Tennessee
SIZE
3.9" wide, 2.9" tall, largest fluorite cube .9" wide
CATEGORY
SUB CATEGORY
ITEM
#71944