2.0" Quartz Needles on Sphalerite - Peru

The Huanzala mine in the Bolognesi Province of Áncash, Peru is an excellent example of a mine with exceptional quality, variety, and availability. Traditionally a lead-zinc mine, Huanzala holds the record for the most mineral tonnage extracted by a single mine. This is quite the feat and it's easy to see why minerals from this locality are so aggressively mined and collected.

This mine has a multitude of awesome minerals from sharply terminated quartz to sparkly pyrite, bubbly aragonite and dense galena. Other common minerals are realgar, orpiment, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, manganoan calcite, rhodonite, rhodochrosite, cassiterite, barite, fluorite and fluorapatite, among other less prevalent minerals. Mineral associations from this mine often contain three to four minerals at once, growing all over one another in phenomenal associations.