It stands 10cm tall.
The "Alma Queen" rhodochrosite was found in 1965 by John Soules and Warren Good at the Sweet Home Mine, in the Alma district of Park County, Colorado. Its was first purchased by Crystal Gallery, a company based out of Colorado, for the amount of $2500. Later it was purchased by Peter Bancroft, he was the one who named it the "Alma Queen". It passed through a few more collections before it ended up in the Perkins Sams collection. In 1986 the Houston Museum of Natural Science purchase the Sams collection and the along with it the "Alma Queen". It was a apparently broken while being moved around the museum, but luckily they were able to repair it. This piece has been consider the world's greatest mineral specimen.
I wish those damn Texans would take better care of our Queen.
ReplyDeleteWarren Good was my grandfather. The story I heard growing up was that my grandfather's partner John Soules was out of town the day my grand father dynamited the mine and supposedly stole the item for himself. In 1965 I was a baby and depend on the stories told by my close relatives.
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