FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[John S. White]

Here are a few of the interesting minerals that I saw at the recent Denver Show. First, some very large nifontovite specimens, from Charcas, Mexico. The second is calcite with coatings of delicate goethite crystals along the edges, also from Charcas. Both the calcite and the nifontovite were offered by Benny Fenn of Fenns Minerals. The other really wonderful and new (for me) specimen is wulfenite with an unidentified white coating from Anarak, Iran.

[jimB]

Hello John,
I see the wulfenite as pictured, any chance the coating stuff is epitaxial?

[GneissWare]

Are you sure this was from Iran? Identical ones are coming from Tuokexun (Toksun) Tulufan Prefecture, Xinjiang, Uygur region, China. The coating is reportedly epitaxial Cerussite.

[Ibrahim Jameel]

I have to agree... i don't think that wulfenite is form Iran. I have seen a number of Iranian specimens, and many from Xinjiang, and this one looks very typical of the Chinese material

[alfredo]

As always I met a few people who went to the show and said they couldn't see anything new - Blindness is becoming epidemic perhaps?

Marcus Origlieri (Mineralzone) had a lot of new marshite crystals from somewhere in the ex-USSR (sorry I don't remember where), and relatively large claringbullites from Ojuela. Rock Currier (Jewel Tunnel Imports) had a nice lot of epidotes associated with well-crystallized clinochlore and andradite from Mali (not the more common epidote-prehnite from there). And various people had davidite-(La) crystals from Bektau-Ata. Several people offered the lovely bright blue nepheline crystals in marble from Afghanistan - allegedly blue because of a thin surface film of sodalite - Dudley Blauwet (Mountain Minerals) had the biggest selection of these. For the micromounters, Ray Hill had nice sharp things from Canada: svanbergites, spheroidal gold, euclase...

[Jordi Fabre]

Stupendous, thanks for the infos!. Something else?

Jordi

[John S. White]

The dealer told me the wulfenite is from Iran, I will check with him. Good question. I assumed he knew what he was talking about.

I neglected to give sizes for the Charcas pieces. The nifontovite is about 12 X 11 cm and the calcite with goethite is about 12 cm across.

[Peter Megaw]

The nifontovite ius amazing and is moving to New Mexico Tech in Socorro.

I too have seen the wulfenites...but labeled China

Be careful on the black edged calcites...some have been dinged and "repaired" with a black Magic Marker to disguise the damage

There is an article on the marshites in the latest Mineral Observer from Russia

There was also a small lot of light yellow stilbites from San Martin, Zacatecas that are very pretty.

Cheers!

[John S. White]

The questioners about the wulfenite were absolutely correct, it is from China. A misunderstanding between me and the dealer. He did have a wulfenite on descloizite from Iran that he was discussing with someone else at the time. Sorry about the confusion.