Boleite is a very rare silver species that only here occurs in large crystals in this quality. After its first discovery in the late 1800s, it was a classic for Mexico, but a little off the beaten track as far as geography goes, compared to the rest of the Mexican minerals we see on the market, and in this collection. Thus, Romero had but a few examples since he focused on mainland Mexico. This was his best boleite. It has relatively large crystals for the species (nearly 1 cm) perched aesthetically on clay matrix, with traces of copper mineralization. Such rich, well-preserved pieces in this size range were uncommon. Certainly today, over 35 years later, they are even harder to obtain and are considered one of the hardest to obtain of Mexican classics. This is one of the finest boleite specimens collected in the "rediscovery" of the old location for this species, by field-collectors Bill Larson and Ed Swoboda in 1973. Romero got it directly from Larson in the 1970s. This specimen from the Dr Miguel Romero collection was on loan exhibition to the University of Arizona Museum for over a decade, until my purchase of this collection in 2008. It was on display in special cases at the museum, and has since been featured in the book "The Miguel Romero Collection of Mexico Minerals" which we sponsored as a special supplement book (published by the Mineralogical Record in December of 2008).
Attribution: Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0
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