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Helvine - Sold


Helvine is a manganese beryllium silicate with sulfur. The mineral, when close to endmember in composition, exhibits a bright yellow color like this example. This is an excellent specimen for the locality which seems to be the type locality. While labeled Schwarzenberg, this appears to be the occurrence at Breitenbrunn, which is a town in the greater Schwarzenberg area. Freiseleben described the mineral in 1817 in his Geognostische Arbeiten, volume 5, page 126. The name denotes the sun in Greek, in allusion to the yellow color of the mineral. This specimen has attractive tetrahedral crystals to 5 mm scattered on a sphalerite crystals with contrasting white calcite. Some of the calcite has been etched with acid, to reveal the helvine crystals. This specimen comes from Ralph Merrill collection, proprietor of Minerals Unlimited. Purchase includes Merrill's catalog card (and label), accessioned in 1973.