AZURITE
ABOUT THE SPECIMEN
Uncountable tightly packed crystals of azurite with an amazingly starry luster and a deep midnight color, all packed into a three-dimensionally formed vug. Bisbee is world famous as a historically great producer of azurite and malachite, and this represents a particularly coveted style from this prestigious mining district. Aside from the central vug, one side reveals a cross section of azurite with cores of malachite packed into individual nodules. The back, consisting of matrix with bits of azurite and malachite showing, provides the perfect complement to the crystallized frontside. Although hard to display even with video, the luster is stunning, especially in sunlight.
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The Bisbee district's azurite formed through oxidation of Jurassic-age (approximately 180 Ma) porphyry copper deposits and polymetallic replacement ores in Paleozoic limestones. The deposit is anomalously old—most Southwestern porphyry coppers are Laramide age (80-50 Ma), making Bisbee's primary mineralization unique. Azurite specimens display extraordinary morphological diversity: rosette forms, tabular blades to 15 cm, stalactites, botryoidal masses, and spherical aggregates. The famous 1890 cave find in the Copper Queen Mine, where manager Mr. Douglas stationed crews for weeks to carefully collect specimens, produced the celebrated rosettes of lustrous crystals reaching 3 mm that were distributed worldwide. Richard Graeme's 1981 Mineralogical Record article documents specimens from specific levels: the Sacramento shaft's 1200-1400 levels yielded tabular crystals to 15 cm, the Campbell shaft's 1600-2000 levels produced near-black bladed groups to 10 cm. What distinguishes Bisbee material is the remarkable range of blue hues—from cerulean to near-black—and frequent associations with malachite pseudomorphs after cuprite. The district produced over 8 billion pounds of copper through nearly a century of mining, with specimen recovery essentially continuous from the 1880s through closure. Authentic old-time Bisbee azurite, particularly pre-1920 material, remains the standard against which other localities are measured.