FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Ed Huskinson]

Hi Jessica. Thank you for your fine work on the skeletal galenas from Madan. I return to Kingman from the Christmas and New Year's holidays to find that you've knocked the mineral community on its collective ear with your article and post. Good work Jessica. I enjoyed the article and your post on FMF as well.
As for the skeletal galenas, they were impressive. I remember seeing them in the MR, "What's New in Minerals, Munich Show". I thought to myself "Wow! Sure hope they're not all gone." Rob had one left in Tucson the next year, and I bought it. Last year I bought another one, closer to the source. The things were not cheap, but I was a happy buyer, although I did break my own observation regarding the Power of Legitimacy. "Paying these insane prices just legitimizes the lunacy". Still, one of the selling points for me was the presence of the little etch/growth lines parallel with the cubic {001} face. I had encountered this phenomenon before, on an octahedral galena which I acquired in Santa Eulalia in 1978. And I'm pretty sure that Juan Orona did not have a micro-abrasive unit in the back of the Bar Centro Minero back then. So i came home happy.

Your exposure of the fakery via "Anropogenic retro-grade back-etching" does not dismay me, as I have a place to put the Madan pieces. There is a subset of my collection devoted to fakes and fakery. The Madan stuff will fit right in, so I'm lucky. Maybe not so much for some of our fellow collectors.

About my fakes: There's an Archie Wilson fake gold specimen (in a wooden box with a glass cover, "hermetically" sealed). He put false bottoms in his boxes, with lead weights in there to give the thing heft. The specimen is totally fabricated, thin gold leaf mostly. Bob Jones wrote a nice article about them for Rock and Gem.

Then there are a few gold samples from Mesquital del Oro in Mexico. Here they drizzled molten gold in small quantities along open fractures and into small voids. Man, they look real, but when you break the rock open, no sign of gold whatsoever. Oh, there's a Moroccan anglesite, beautiful bright orange color. I think they were dipped in bleach or something to give them the striking orange-red aspect. And a "Tchermigite" AlKSO4.(alum). Beautiful purple octahedra. And a couple of other things. But the skeletons will be the pride of the suite, that's for sure.

This situation reminds me of the Epitonium scalare (Linnaeus 1758) story. When this beautiful little medium-spired conispiral gastropod was first found, specimens were rare; and they commanded astronomical prices. So much so that the Japanese and Chinese manufactured copies out of rice paper/paste and sold them. Later, when the shells became abundant, the price for the real shells dropped, while the rice paper copies began to sell for far more than the real things. It's now impossible to find one (I've tried), what with the dermistid beetles and all. Donna Leicht or Paula Presmyk may weigh in on this.
So, will the skeletal galens increase in value too, just as cuiriosities? Who knows, but it would not surprise me if they do. Given the limited number of pieces out there, I think they will increase in value, unless of course the owner 'way overspent for his/her piece. Power of Legitimacy indeed. It'll take time.
Here is a link to learn about the Epitonium scalare shell. It has a nice reiteration of the story, too.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/wentletrap.html
(link normalized by FMF)

Also, some photos of my little Santa Eulalia etched octahdral galena specimen and a couple of photos of my personal Epitonium scalare shell along with 3 copies of the shell carved from ivory. The carvers were simply replicating a thing of beauty, with no intention whatsoever of 'Fakery".

Hope you had a well-mineralized Christmas, and that you will have a prosperous New Year, and I look forward to seeing you (and your dad) in Tucson next month.

Ed in Kingman

[Peter Megaw]

Can't believe that little sweetie still resides outside of its proper intended home in Tucson...it's way out of place in Kingman Ed!!! Fortunately, help IS available...

This thread worried Lauren at first too...the photos below show a galena with an extremely hoppered growth spiral from Madan she's had for several years. This clearly is natural growth with a solid center unlike Jessica's subjects, but perhaps if a crystal lilke this got subjected to extreme back-etching like affected your octahedron (or the one from Naica below that suffered back-etching, regrowth and then light back etching to give it a melted appearance) you might be able to get something resembling the cubic lattices generated with the microabrasive.

Ed, could you please repost the Santa Eulalia galena with a close-up shot of your fakes showing the (001) lines...they would be fun to compare. However, given the structure of galena I suspect that ALL growth lines are going to be (001) so any "degrowth" lines (of whatever origin) will be too.

On a sadder note, Mateo Irigoyen, long-time mineral collector in Santa Eulalia, and the collector of many of the best Guazapares pyromorphites, died just before Christmas. He, Juan, Chilo, and Lolo are now gone...but Ramon and Marin are still going strong!

[Darren]

Absolutley amazing job, Jessica, the article is just a fun and interesting read!

Ed, I always learn so much from your longer posts, thanks.

Pete, always love the photos that you and Ed both post.

Thanks.

Darren