Fluorapatite

specimen number:
1052722

location:
Horni Slavkov, Sokolov, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic

description:
Attractive purple tabular crystals of translucent fluorapatite averaging 0.5 cm in size across the top of matrix. Some damage present as seen, still quite nice for this old classic. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video which gives an acquisition date of 1909.

The Horni Slavkov mining district, historically known by its German name Schlaggenwald and situated in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic, is a premier European mineral locality famous for producing world-class specimens of apatite, carpholite, and exceptional twin crystals of cassiterite. Geologically, this historic deposit is located within the Slavkov Forest crystalline complex, where a series of highly evolved, late-Variscan-age granitic cupolas intruded older metamorphic gneiss host rocks during the late Paleozoic era. The intense interaction of volatile-rich residual magmas and hydrothermal fluids produced extensive greisenization, a process that altered the granite into a quartz-topaz-mica rock rich in tin, tungsten, and lithium, with slow crystallization in open fissures forming open pockets packed with magnificent cassiterite, wolframite, and pristine fluorite crystals. Historically, organized mining at Schlaggenwald began in the late thirteenth century, with the district rising to become an international powerhouse of tin production during the sixteenth century, when mining towns were granted formal royal privileges. Underground shaft and tunnel operations targeting these deep greisen veins fluctuated over the centuries through various economic cycles and geopolitical shifts, concluding with a massive twentieth-century industrial push for uranium and tungsten under state control between 1946 and 1961, which led to the permanent closure of the historic mines by the mid-1960s.

The mineral dealership of C. Riemer, based in Magdeburg, Germany, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, operated as a notable regional distributor of specialized geological and mineralogical specimens tailored for educational institutions, academic researchers, and advanced private collectors. Functioning alongside contemporaneous central German enterprises, Riemer specialized in sourcing, documenting, and preparing mineral suites that prominently featured classic structural occurrences from regional German volcanic zones, the Harz Mountains, and the famous salt and potash deposits of the Saxony-Anhalt region, such as Stassfurt and Leopoldshall. His commercial business catalogs and meticulously curated specimen assemblies targeted the expanding demands of technical universities and scientific associations during a highly active period of European mineralogical classification and economic geology. The dealership provided meticulously labeled reference pieces, frequently mounted or resting on distinct, hand-written or stamped white paper merchant tags that explicitly preserved the precise mineral chemistry, crystallization style, and localized mine provenance.

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