Rosell Minerales

In this piece, three very interesting magnesium species, two hydroxilcarbonates and one hydroxide coexist. On the one hand we observe some aggregates of foliaceous crystals of dypingite, forming rosettes, white color, although they are colorless. They are accompanied by sheaves of flattened crystals of hydromagnesite. All of them are disposed on a rock matrix with blue to gray brucite. A Catalan piece that is hard to find today, with unusual species and quality.

Size: 6 x 5 x 3.2 cm.
Found in 1970's.

Col. Manchion (Barcelona).
Classic locality

Globular aggregates formed by lamellar crystals of theisite. With a bluish to green color and brilliance. On a dolomite matrix with barite and chalcopyrite. This mineral species is the second citation in Spain. Theisite is a rare copper and zinc arsenate-antimonate that has been described for the first time in this mine in the Catalan Pyrenees. Accompanied by several azurite, transparent, bright, well-defined and some doubly terminated. Analysis results will be sent to the buyer.

Size: 8.6 x 5.5 x 3.5 cm.
Found in 2013.

Analyzed specimen with report

On a druse of quartz crystals we can enjoy numerous aggregates of hematite crystals with a hexagonal to rounded shape and conical growth, very curious, with brilliance and brown to reddish color. These specimens come from a fortuitous find in an area very close to the well-knoewn town of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines. An aesthetic rarity.

Size: 6 x 3 x 2.5 cm.
Main crystal: 3-4 mm.
Found in 2000.

On a druse of quartz crystals we can enjoy numerous aggregates of hematite crystals with a hexagonal to rounded shape and conical growth, very curious, with brilliance and brown to reddish color. These specimens come from a fortuitous find in an area very close to the well-knoewn town of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines. An aesthetic rarity.

Size: 6.2 x 3.5 x 3 cm.
Main crystal: 3-4 mm.
Found in 2000.

A historical specimen of this classic mine. Various tabular baryte crystals peppered by small but brilliant and well-shaped cinnabar crystals. These specimens are very difficult to find today.

Size: 8 x 5.6 x 4 cm.
Found in ±1980.

Col. Manchion (Barcelona).
Classic locality

The specimens of this species have been known since ancient times as pseudomorphic kyanite after andalusite. Both species are polymorphic, so substitution is not a rare case. The label says "Santiago de Compostela", but from what we have investigated, it is the area of the Conceilhos de Touro and O Pino, to the E. of Santiago, where for decades this material was worked as kyanite. A piece with history ...

Size: 3.5 x 2 x 1.9 cm.
Found in ca. 1980.

Col. J. Astor (Barcelona).

Group of beryl var. heliodor crystals, very brilliant, with an excellent transparence and a very uniform yellow color, real color. Many facets visible. A gem from this very famous and historic location.

 

Size: 2 x 1.5 x 1.5 cm.
Found in ca. 1990.

Col. J. Astor (Barcelona).
Classic locality

Very aesthetic aggregate of strontianite showing ciclic twinned crystals. Very brilliant, translucent and with a defined faces and edges. Accompanied by dolomite. This deposit, worked by opencut mines, in the past was also worked for talc. These specimens are a classic of the Austrian and European mineralogy.

Size: 5.7 x 3.8 x 3.6 cm.

Classic locality

Very aesthetic aggregate of strontianite showing ciclic twinned crystals. Translucent and with a defined faces and edges. Accompanied by dolomite. This deposit, worked by opencut mines, in the past was also worked for talc. These specimens are a classic of the Austrian and European mineralogy.

Size: 4.2 x 4 x 3.7 cm.

Classic locality

Very aesthetic aggregate of strontianite showing ciclic twinned crystals. Very brilliant, translucent and with a defined faces and edges. Accompanied by dolomite. This deposit, worked by opencut mines, in the past was also worked for talc. These specimens are a classic of the Austrian and European mineralogy.

Size: 4.5 × 4 × 3.8 cm

Classic locality

Group of fluorite crystals from this classic English mine, presents the shapes of the cube, interpenetrated and some twinned. Good transparence and very characteristic green color. This sample is photographed in some books that Joan Astor published in issuu [online pág. 34]. It was acquired in 1980 from Bailey Minerals (Ángel Jesús Talabán García, Segovia 1942-Madrid 2007). A very aesthetic piece.

Size: 6.8 x 3.5 x 3.5 cm.
Main crystal: 9 mm. edge/arista
Found in 1970-80's.

Col. Joan Astor.
Fluorescent under long wave UV

Showy specimen in the form of divergent stalactitic aggregates, with a patina of manganese oxides on the back side. Aerial and good sized. A very curious piece of this mine from Murcia.

Size: 8 x 7 x 6.5 cm.

Col. J.A. Robles (La Unión, Murcia)

Various aggregates of mimetite crystals, rounded, globular, orange color. From this classic English locality known for this mimetite variety. With handwritten label of Kucera (Barcelona). The finest mimetite specimens were collected in the 19th century but, although increasingly hard to find, some fine material has been obtained since, particularly in the 1970's. However, the mine is notoriously unstable and there have been a number of accidents involving collectors. No one has been critically injured but the incidents have highlighted the dangers of the old workings in the Caldbeck Fells (mindat).

Size: 6.5 x 3.2 x 3 cm.
Main crystal: 3 mm.
Found in 1970's.

Col. Joan Astor.
Classic locality

Alurgite is a variety of purple muscovite. It was classified 1959 as an intermediate variety between leucophyllite and muscovite. A study of Knurr and Bailey (1986, online) showed that the alurgite, treated as muscovite-2M1 with Mn, contains trivalent manganese (in contrast to divalent Mn-containing "manganophyllite"). This specimen of good size shows us an aggregate of micaceous crystals, with an intense brilliance and good color, in a quartzite rocky matrix. A rare variety of muscovite.

Size: 10 x 8.5 x 6 cm.

On a matrix of sulphides, an iridescent patina of covellite, very brilliant, with deep blue color. From a classic locality for the Spanish mineralogy. This specimen belongs from the Arguijo collection. A rarity.

Size: 5.6 x 4.5 x 2.8 cm.
Found in 1980's.

Col. A. Arguijo (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona).
Classic locality

his good sized specimen from the late 80s belongs from the Arguijo collection, and it was mined in this famous "onubense" mine. It is a sulphide matrix partially covered by brilliant covellite microcrystals, very defined and visible. It has an intense metallic blue iridescence and this very characteristic color. It is accompanied by numerous crystals of native sulphur with curved faces, brilliance, translucent and showing a delicate yellow tone. It was mined from a sporadic finding in the Corta Atalaya, Minas de Riotinto. A unique occasion to obtain one of these "old" specimens.

Size: 7.4 x 5.7 x 5.2 cm.
Found in 1980's.

Col. A. Arguijo (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona).
Classic locality

A very aesthetic miniature. Orthoclase specimen that shows two crystals with the Karlsbad twin. An unusual piece for this classic Spanish locality. From the Joan Astor collection (Barcelona), former Joan Abella collection (Sabadell).

Size: 3 x 2 x 2 cm.
Found in 1990's.

Col. Joan Astor, Col. Joan Abella.
Classic locality

These rare specimens of actinolite correspond to those cited by L. Thomas (Els Minerals de Catalunya, year 1920) and E. Bareche (Els Minerals de Catalunya, Segle XX, year 2005: "Where it really appears in large quantities is inside the well they made near the creek in the mines of Can Serrat, road from Hostalric to Arbúcies, in the district of Sant Feliu de Buixalleu. It is shiny, greenish in color; we collected and kept specimens that were examined by Don Ramón Adan de Yarza, which confirmed our identification". It is a skarn formed by the contact of the granodiorites and the limestone of the Paleozoic. From the former Arguijo collection.

Size: 7 x 6 x 5 cm.
Found in 1970's.

Col. A. Arguijo (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona)

Old specimen of native arsenic, forming botryoidal aggregates, with an intense gray color slightly bronze. These specimens were known locally as "scherbenkobalt" (pieces of cobalt). Note that this mine is the Type Locality of the annabergite. A difficult German mineral classic to find from this locality, an old silver and cobalt mine, worked from around 1650 until 1852 and reworked between 1856 and 1859.

Size: 4.5 x 4 x 2.8 cm.

Hidalgoite specimen from this classic Spanish mine. It appears as olive-green coatings, forming aggregates of tiny crystals. Collected in 1999 by M. Marí and A. García. The Estrella mine is located in the Majadillas hill, in the extreme south of the municipality of Pardos, in Guadalajara. It is an old copper and silver mine whose exploitation dates back to the 17th century, with its maximum activity being in the mid-19th century coinciding with the splendor of the nearby Hiendelaencina mines.

Size: 6.7 x 3.8 x 2 cm.
Found in 1999.

Col. M. Marí & A. García, #0.131
Classic locality

Bolivarite is a very rare aluminium phosphate, related to evansite. In this specimen white bolivarite is filling vugs of a limonite matrix. This mineral was found as crusts and as a filling of cracks in some granitic rocks a few km from Pontevedra (Spain), on the road to Campo Lameiro. Its discoverers, Fernandez Navarro and Castro Barea, named it as a tribute to the eminent Spanish entomologist, exiled in Mexico after the Spanish Civil War, Ignacio Bolivar y Urrutia.

Size: 3.3 x 2.2 x 2.1 cm.

Rich group of prismatic pyromorphite crystals, of an intense green color and forming radial aggregates. This specimen comes from this not well-known mine, one of the most remote in central Wales. The first works date from 1854, and continued to be exploited intermittently until 1896. Total registered production is 3271 tons of lead ore. Sphalerite and marcasite are relatively common species, while pyromorphite is rare. The specimen comes from the former Joan Astor collection and was purchased from Montal in 1977. With old labels.

Size: 5 x 4 x 2.8 cm.
Main crystal: 5 mm.
Found in 1970's.

Col. Joan Astor.

Group of prismatic baryte crystals, doubly terminated and well defined, with good luster and transparency. They are disposed very aerially on the matrix. The history of the Silius mines begins in the first decades of the 20th century, particularly in 1916, when the first research permits were registered for the galena. It was in the early 1950s that the focus was on major fluorite outcrops and in 1953 the first company to obtain the mining concession for the exploitation of the rich fluors of fluorite and galena was created, the Mineraria Silius SpA, active until 2006.

Size: 6.5 x 5.5 x 4.5 cm.
Main crystal: 20 mm.

As M. Calvo indicates in his work (Minas y mInerales de España), in the area of Bedures hill (or Vidures), in the municipality of Vegadeo, there are several mining works, some of them very ancient, in which various lead mineral species have been described and among them, pyromorphite stands out. This piece we propose, found by chance in a mineral show far from the mine that saw it born, shows a matrix of milky quartz, with iron oxides and a black layer of coronadite in one side. We can observe also several crystals of green pyromorphite on the surface. Some form divergent aggregates, others isolated, but with an intense green color, with zoning in some of them. They show hexagonal prisms truncated by pinacoidal faces and parallel growth aggregates. A very rare specimen for this Spanish locality.

Size: 5.5 x 4.8 x 4 cm.

As M. Calvo indicates in his work (Minas y mInerales de España), in the area of Bedures hill (or Vidures), in the municipality of Vegadeo, there are several mining works, some of them very ancient, in which various lead mineral species have been described and among them, pyromorphite stands out. This piece we propose, found by chance in a mineral show far from the mine that saw it born, shows a matrix of milky quartz, with iron oxides and, on it, a black layer of coronadite. We can observe also several crystals of green pyromorphite dot its surface. Some form divergent aggregates, others isolated, but with an intense green color, with zoning in some of them. They show hexagonal prisms truncated by pinacoidal faces and parallel growth aggregates. A high quality and very rare specimen for the locality.

Size: 12.0 x 9.7 x 6.6 cm.
Main crystal: 3 mm.