Natural Big Quartz Cluster with Calcite and Galena Crystals from Bulgaria 2400g

A substantial block, over 21cm across, covered on every side with carbonate crystal in two clearly different habits. On the left, broad stacked plates in a soft peach-cream, each built up from thin layers so the faces step like a fanned deck of cards. To the right, hundreds of smaller crystals in a cooler white, blocky and rhombic, packed shoulder to shoulder across the whole face. Small patches of dark grey galena show through at the edges and in a few gaps, and the underside opens into pale quartz. Under ultraviolet light the calcite fluoresces: a deep rose-red at 365nm longwave, with a few blades staying pale and inert, and a much brighter scarlet across almost the whole surface at 310nm midwave, while the galena stays dark throughout.

Two habits of the same mineral sitting side by side on one specimen is what makes this block interesting: the stacked peach plates and the fine white rhombs came out of the same pocket in the Bulgarian lead-zinc field of the Rhodope Mountains. Untreated. Calcite is 3 on the Mohs scale, galena 2.5 and quartz 7, so it is a soft piece for its size. At 2.4kg and 210mm long it wants a permanent spot rather than a shelf it has to share, ideally one with a UV lamp.

Natural quartz with UV-fluorescent calcite and galena, Bulgaria, single piece.