Sphalerite with Calcite

Sphalerite with Calcite from the Trepça Mine, Mitrovica, Kosovo, measuring 62 × 43 × 30 mm and weighing 127 grams. A solid piece from one of the most historically important lead-zinc-silver mines in the Balkans.

Sphalerite, zinc sulfide ZnS, was one of the principal ore minerals of the Trepça deposit, a large skarn and hydrothermal replacement orebody that has been worked, on and off, for the better part of a century. Calcite grew later in the same system, lining open space left once the main sulfide-forming stage had finished, a sequence typical of skarn-related polymetallic deposits of this kind.

Trepça specimens carry real historical weight in European mineral collecting, the mine having been one of the continent's major metal producers through much of the twentieth century. This piece is from the David Vince Collection.