Fluorite

Fluorite from the Huanggang Fe-Sn Deposit, Hexigten Banner, Inner Mongolia, China, measuring 76 × 60 × 38 mm and weighing 195 grams. A good solid piece from a deposit that has become well known among collectors over the past twenty years.

Fluorite is calcium fluoride, CaF2, isometric, and it occurs very widely as a gangue mineral in skarn, greisen and vein deposits of many kinds. The Huanggang deposit is a skarn-type iron-tin orebody formed where a granite intrusion reacted with carbonate host rock, and that skarn environment has proven unusually productive for well-crystallised Fluorite, alongside the Hubnerite and other species the locality is also known for.

Huanggang has, within a relatively short time, become one of the more collectable modern Chinese Fluorite localities, and a cube-rich piece of this size is a good way to show the deposit at its best. This piece is from the David Vince Collection.