STIBNITE
Specimen sti-29
$ 45.00Dims: 2.05x1.64x0.74" (5.20x4.16x1.89cm)
Wt: 1.20oz (33.9g)
Herja, Baia Mare, Romania
I like this stibnit specimen, because the individual crystals vary in length and they are clustered (instead of uniformly distributed), giving the specimen some character and visual interest. The individual blades tend to be well formed, are a bright silver color and have a high metallic luster. The individual crystals range in size from a few millimeters wide, to very fine acicular crystals too thin to measure. Except for the fine needles, the crystals all appear to emerge from a single point. There is possibly another mineral present - there are several fragments of a mineral in a massive form. These pieces look like hematite, but that is not likely (hematite forms in oxidizing environments, stibnite in reducing ones). Actually, the color and luster are the sames as the stibnite, and I suspect that these are pieces broken from an earlier massive growth that lodged in the growing needles of this specimen. They look different because we see fracture surfaces instead of crystal faces.