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  • A splendid pyromorphite specimen featuring densely clustered crystals with rich orange coloration and exceptional glossy luster. The 4 cm specimen from Morocco's historic Guatomo Mine displays superb crystal development, brilliant surface quality, and represents a rare arsenic-rich variant from this notable locality.
  • A splendid pyromorphite specimen featuring densely clustered crystals with rich orange coloration and exceptional glossy luster. The 4 cm specimen from Morocco's historic Guatomo Mine displays superb crystal development, brilliant surface quality, and represents a rare arsenic-rich variant from this notable locality.
  • A splendid pyromorphite specimen featuring densely clustered crystals with rich orange coloration and exceptional glossy luster. The 4 cm specimen from Morocco's historic Guatomo Mine displays superb crystal development, brilliant surface quality, and represents a rare arsenic-rich variant from this notable locality.
  • A splendid pyromorphite specimen featuring densely clustered crystals with rich orange coloration and exceptional glossy luster. The 4 cm specimen from Morocco's historic Guatomo Mine displays superb crystal development, brilliant surface quality, and represents a rare arsenic-rich variant from this notable locality.
  • A splendid pyromorphite specimen featuring densely clustered crystals with rich orange coloration and exceptional glossy luster. The 4 cm specimen from Morocco's historic Guatomo Mine displays superb crystal development, brilliant surface quality, and represents a rare arsenic-rich variant from this notable locality.
  • A splendid pyromorphite specimen featuring densely clustered crystals with rich orange coloration and exceptional glossy luster. The 4 cm specimen from Morocco's historic Guatomo Mine displays superb crystal development, brilliant surface quality, and represents a rare arsenic-rich variant from this notable locality.

PYROMORPHITE

Guatomo Mine, Tham Thalu, Bannang Sata District, Yala Province, Thailand
3.5 x 3 x 2 cm
$250.00
$250.00
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ABOUT THE SPECIMEN

Appealing miniature with bright orange color and a wet, glossy luster. Guatomo is an old lead mine that was worked for many years industrially before artisanal specimen collecting was done by a pair of Italian mineral dealers between 1996 and 1998. Both pyromorphite and mimetite do occur from this locality, and it's essentially impossible to know if this is an intermediate member of the solid solution series between the two or just arsenian pyromorphite without proper lab analysis. In my opinion, as far as color and luster go, these pieces rival the great pyro's to come out of the legendary Bunker Hill Mine.

Do note, the specimen color comes across as more saturated in the photos than in real life, please refer to the video for the most accurate representation.

 

VIDEO

 

MORE INFO

A Pb-Sn skarn deposit formed by granite intrusion into limestone in the southern Thai Peninsula, the Guatomo Mine near Tham Thalu was worked for tin concentrate from the early 1980s until the collapse of world tin prices ended production in 1985. Descending oxidizing fluids reacted with galena in a gossan-dominated supergene zone, precipitating yellow to yellow-orange hexagonal crystals in fractures cutting hydrothermal quartz veins and adjacent altered granite. Števko et al.'s 2020 electron microprobe study confirmed that the mimetite-pyromorphite series is represented across a wide compositional range at Guatomo - from near end-member mimetite through phosphorus-enriched intermediates to true arsenian pyromorphite - making strict species attribution dependent on analysis rather than appearance. Crystals form short prismatic to tabular prisms with excellent luster on gossan and quartz matrix. The deposit is considered one of the world's classic mimetite localities, with the original discovery documented in the mineralogical literature by Bill Pinch in the 1970s following his recognition of properly labeled specimens at a Japanese institution; material has circulated in collections since, though fine crystallized examples remain consistently difficult to source given the mine's limited production window.