Friday Update – Precious Metals

AS the weekend approaches we bring to you another selection of marvelous ‘precious metal’ minerals to brighten your screen.

Our choice of Native Gold shows how this most precious of metals can form in many different ways, but always with a bright golden-yellow colour with no tarnish. No gold is ever common, but placer, or alluvial Native Gold, is the most widely seen sort, either as fine grains like in the sample from Finland, or rarer larger nuggets. Crystallized Native Gold is the pinnacle of rarity, but even within this grouping there are different gradings depending both on aesthetic qualities and unusual forms. Wire Native Gold like that from the Breckenridge Mining District in Colorado is an extreme rarity but is perhaps not the same level of beauty as the stunning ‘leaf’ Native Gold historically found at Roşia Montană in Romania but of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Whilst Native Gold is rarely seen as wires, this is the typical form one sees in Native Silver, but with natural oxidation metallic silver metal tarnishes, producing a range of shades from ‘copper’ coloured metallic rose-silver right through to dull black. Kongsberg (King’s Mountain) is the most recognizable locality to collectors for the sheer size and beauty of its specimens, but a number of the classic old silver mining districts in Germany have furnished wonderfully attractive pieces which, in some respects, are more significant for their rarity and history.

The range and beauty of other silver-bearing species from German mines is impressive and with such an important history of mining many of these represent extremely significant collectible items of mining and mineralogical heritage. Amongst these are the so-called ‘Ruby Silvers’: silver sulphosalt species within blood-red colour, or internal reflections.

In Romania, a remarkable concentration of exceptionally well-crystallized silver tellurides has been known for centuries, but specimens are now increasingly becoming harder to source from older collections.

Finally, not forgetting platinum. Sperrylite - seen here as classic mirror-bright silver crystals from Russia - is one of the few notable platinum-bearing minerals that forms distinct crystals large enough for display.

Platinum is also noted as a symbol of a 70th anniversary. We don’t have an anniversary as such, but we would like to wish a very happy 70th birthday to someone many of you will know, but especially so our UK-based contingent. Having just published his fourth major book – this time on the Victorian polymath John Ruskin – Roy Starkey can now have a much-deserved rest and celebration, although I just know that ‘rest’ never comes into the equation. Happy Birthday from all of us at Crystal Classics!

Please note: Today's featured specimens are situated at both our US and UK showrooms.