Native Silver

A remarkably rich specimen of Native Silver from the "Vereinigt Feld", Johanngeorgenstadt, Erzgebirge, Saxony, Germany.  "Vereinigt Feld" was a group of mines which were amalgamated under this title, which translates to “United Field”.  Mining began around 1550, with the first silver veins discovered in about 1662.  This large thumbnail specimen has no matrix and composes of 1 mm equant Native Silver crystals sintered together with an internal network of highly porous void space.  The specimen forms a whitish-silver granular mass of crystals with a speckled bright metallic lustre.  it is accompanied with a somewhat faded and water damaged old German handwritten label in fine copperplate script.