RHENIITE
Specimen rhe-1
$ 100.00Dims: 1-1/8" x 3/4" x 1/2"
Wt: 4.1 g
Kuridavy Volcano, Iturup Island, Russia
I've been told that this is the only strictly-rhenium-bearing mineral in existence! This Rhenite specimen is a metallic gray color and is rough on the outside, with the exception of some tiny, possibly crystalline areas (they're too small to properly determine under 15x magnification). However, given that this mineral has a high percentage of a rare element like rhenium, and given that it came from the vicinity of a volcano located on an island off of Russia, I think that this is worth it. Given that rhenium is a rather dense metal and this specimen is not very heavy for its size, the rheniite is probably in the form of a thin crust or dusting on a matrix. I am thinking that the bright, lustrous patches on the specimen are small semicrystalline patches of the mysterious sulfide mineral.