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  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.
  • A dramatic, tower-like mineral specimen featuring iridescent blue-green chalcopyrite forming organic, tendril-like patterns across the surface. Orange-red calcite crystals are scattered throughout, creating striking contrast against the metallic sulfide minerals. The specimen's unusual formation creates a sculptural presence, with layered minerals building up to create a distinctive vertical form.

CHALCOCITE & CHALCOPYRITE WITH CALCITE

Tonglushan Mine, Edong, Daye, Huangshi Prefecture, Hubei Province, China
20.3 x 7 x 10.6 cm
$5,500.00
$5,500.00
Shipping calculated at checkout.

ABOUT THE SPECIMEN

Layered, complex, and all-around dramatic large specimen from a limited one-time find in 2012-13. On top of a sulfide matrix you have intergrown chalcocite, partially replaced by djurleite (both copper sulfide minerals), later coated with a layer of iridescent chalcopyrite, and topped off with accenting colorful and lustrous calcite. When looking at the purple, blue, and green tendril-like growths, they look alien and organic, and there's just nothing else like them in the mineral world. The calcite crystals are large for these combo pieces and give nice contrast with their orange to red color caused by iron oxide inclusions. The back sides are also almost completely covered by a layer of glittering calcites, so this presents great from all angles. This assemblage is simply extraordinary and, may it need repeating, unparalleled in appearance. Given its size and composition, there's very minor damage and it takes a closer look to notice. Specimens from this location are scarce on the market nowadays, and I'd rank this as one of the best to have come out of the entire find. Offered at a very reasonable price, and comes with a custom lucite base to properly exhibit the piece.

 

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MORE INFO

Tongshan exploits Early Yanshanian skarn-type Cu-Fe mineralization in the Middle-Lower Yangtze River Belt, where a hornblende quartz monzodiorite intruded Triassic carbonate sequences generating the polymetallic ore bodies responsible for one of China's oldest copper-producing districts. A 2012–2013 discovery produced a single elongated open cavity - large enough for miners to sit in - in which chalcocite and djurleite formed as intergrown masses at cluster cores, with a thin chalcopyrite coating blanketing outer surfaces entirely; electron microprobe analysis confirmed the iridescent blue-purple tarnish driving early speculation was chalcopyrite rather than the initially suspected bornite. Djurleite also occurs as thin, flat blade-like crystals with multiple pointed terminations reaching 2 cm - a habit sufficiently unusual that the species identification required formal laboratory confirmation before material reached market. The pocket was mined out within a single season, with the bulk of larger pieces damaged during extraction as miners without specimen-recovery experience scraped material directly from cavity walls; fine matrix examples with intact calcite association are a small fraction of total recovery. Nothing comparable has emerged from the district since.