Description
Detailed Description
This is a spectacular cluster of large tennantite crystals with mirror-bright lustre and brilliant sharp triangular crystal growth patterns. These crystals, up to over 4 cm in height, feature positive and negative tetrahedral forms, giving each a truncated shape. In excellent condition, there is an incomplete crystal at the far right and the lower left, and minor rubbing. Around the back/underside, the crystals are not complete where they would have originally attached to rock, but the back is recrystallized, so it was detached prior to the last crystallization event.
From the Tracy Kimmel collection, she acquired it from me a few years ago. An amazing tennantite, displays beautifully.
About Tracy Kimmel (click here)
About these Tennantites
Mundo Nuevo has been best known for its hubnerite, quartz, fluorite and augelite. In recent years there have been occasional excellent finds of tennantite.
These tennantites, mined during 2014-15 specimen recovery work, are part of a find that has now been analyzed quite extensively. Of those (over 40 specimens tested) all were tennantite except one that was a borderline tennantite-tetrahedrite. Accordingly, specimens from this find are now labelled tennantite. I have not had each of these analyzed, given the pervasive tennantite results (and not wanting to add to their prices by incurring unnecessary cost). These tennantites were originally posted on this website labelled “tetrahedrite”, as they were sold to me under that label – they were then removed from the site until the analysis work on the find had been completed.
They are excellent sharp crystals. After the crystals had formed, a late-stage fragmentation and recrystallization event seems to have occurred – the specimens have uneven naturally-fractured surfaces on the back/underside, and these surfaces are recrystallized.
