Auction Win: Quartz (clean yourself - fun activity)

Locality: Twin Creek Mine, Mount Ida, Montgomery County, Arkansas, USA

Size: Small Cabinet - 9 × 6.6 × 3.5 cm

Fun and easy to clean, this piece still has the ‘peanut butter’ clay/dirt on it!

We self-collected this in February of 2020, the week the world changed and Covid ‘19 shut our country down.

Quartz is a silicate mineral with formula SiO2, one of the most common minerals in Earth’s crust. It was first described in 1546 by Georgius Agricola, and its name comes from the German word “quarz,” of uncertain origin; it is also the familiar mineral used in glass-like clear crystals and in electronic timing devices.

Mount Ida in Montgomery County, Arkansas is a well-known quartz crystal district, with numerous mines and prospects in the vicinity and a long-standing reputation as the “Quartz Crystal Capital of the World.” The area’s quartz mines are hosted in Crystal Mountain Sandstone, where stockwork and vein mineralization have produced abundant quartz specimens. For collectors, Mount Ida remains one of Arkansas’s most important sources for quartz crystal material, especially pieces associated with the district’s classic open-pit workings.