Cassiterite

specimen number:
9507079

location:
Pingwu mine, Huya, Pingwu Co., Mianyang, Sichuan, China

description:
A grouping of lustrous double terminated tetragonal cassiterite crystals. Minor attached muscovite, complete all around and in excellent condition.

The Pingwu mine near Huya township in Sichuan, China, is a high-elevation alpine deposit famously known for producing world-class mineral specimens like golden-orange scheelite, tabular beryl, and lustrous cassiterite. While the occurrence was first explored and initially worked in the 1950s, it has never operated as a single industrial entity with a definitive closing date; instead, it has sustained a long history of intermittent, small-scale artisanal and mineral-collecting operations that continue to this day. Geologically, the deposit is a granite-related hydrothermal and greisen-type system located within the Songpan-Ganzi orogenic belt. It consists of fracture-controlled quartz-mica and quartz-feldspar-mica veins formed when small, highly evolved leucogranitic intrusions were emplaced into Upper Triassic metasedimentary host rocks, including schist, slate, and marble.

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