Calcite

The Samson mine in St. Andreasberg, Lower Saxony, Germany, was an old silver mine which eventually closed in 1910.  Amongst the extensive suite of specimen quality minerals, it produced was a limited variety of Calcite crystals which displayed several unusual habits.  This at first seemingly unremarkable specimen, when examined close to, revels a surface  covered in delightfully complex Calcite crystals to 2 cm across with glassy transparent shells of, presumably, flattened rhombohedra, each with one face concavely-hopped inwards and with the resulting depression filled with a mirror-like lake of flat Calcite strewn with projecting corners of embedded rhombohedral crystals.  These really are quite sensational.  To add icing on the cake, this is an ex. Archduke Stephan Franz Victor von Habsburg-Lothringen specimen.  A superb and almost complete 8.8 x 7.0 cm Archduke Stephan label accompanies this specimen together with its matching catalogue label (75/160) glued to the specimen’s base, together with a Carl Rumpff label, the German industrialist who bought the collection.