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[Forrestblyth]

Skutterudite

Bailey Mine, Cobalt, Cobalt-Gowganda Region, Timiskaming District, Ontario, Canada

[Pete Richards]

Where is the skutterudite? What is the purple mineral? This looks rather different from typical material from Cobalt, Ontario. What do the Canadians among us think?

[Forrestblyth]

Hi Pete,

"Where is the skutterudite? What is the purple mineral?"

I assumed the lovely encrusting blue mineral was the skutterudite.

But a little background regarding the identification and provenance of this specimen.
A little sad, but as so often happens I have had the opportunity to purchase from the estate of a collector past. My main consuming passion has always been to focus on material from the North of England ore fields. I acquired most of the material available from this collection and it was superb. The collector, unlike me, was meticulous and very experienced

Of course his entire collection was very extensive and also featured superb collections from some very interesting locations specializing in New Zeeland, Canada, Australia and some very remote other locations.

As I said I try to limit my collective area to NE UK. But when acquiring these specimens, I could not resist a few dozen pieces from the other detailed boxed material. All his specimens were very organized and recorded in detail. So that is how I have reasonable confidence in this specimen's provenance. However, some specimens did have very small individual crystals that had small highlighter arrows affixed. I don't think this was the case with this piece and the pointer perhaps got lost but I shall go over it with my loupe to see if anything is obvious

With that in mind the piece is obviously of metallic ore material as it is very heavy for its size, so I assume the Nickel would produces an effect of this nature. The colouration was for me what made me select it. It is perhaps even more striking in the hand compared to my attempts to record in photo. I do like this piece, perhaps it is not as bling as some people prefer, but I thought people might like to see it for it is an unusual specimen.

[Herwig]

This looks like a sulphide that was (partially?) etched out of some white matrix (a carbonate of some kind?)
Maybe the etching process is responsible for the surface color of the sulphide?

Forrest, all the above does not take away that this is a very interesting specimen! You have chosen well, no questions there! :-)

[Forrestblyth]

By etched do you mean man made preparation etching or natures environmental etching.

I can see this is not invasive preparation etched. Its has a natural back on the specimen from when extracted from its location. I would be confident it is fresh from the ground without any alteration.