2.1" Quartz-Encrusted Orange Wulfenite Crystals - Arizona

About Wulfenite

Wulfenite is a lead-based molybdate mineral with a chemical formula Pb(MoO4). It forms as a secondary mineral in the oxidation zones of hydrothermal lead deposits, its color ranging anywhere between yellow to bright orange and red and occasionally brown. Typically forming as tabular, stubby, or pyramidal crystals, this unique mineral can be both brilliantly transparent and opaque.

Safety: While these crystals are safe to hold, due to the fact that they are lead-based we strongly recommend washing your hands after handling.

About the Finch Mine

The Finch Mine, also known as the Barking Spider Mine, is a mineral locality in Keystone Gulch near Hayden, within the Banner Mining District of Gila County, Arizona. The mine exploited lead, vanadium, copper, and molybdenum-bearing mineralization associated with fissure veins and altered rocks. Mining activity in the surrounding district dates to the late 19th century, with various operations working deposits for copper, lead, zinc, vanadium, and molybdenum. The Finch Mine itself produced small quantities of molybdenum-vanadium concentrate during the 1930s, but today it is much better known among mineral collectors for its diverse suite of secondary minerals.

The mine is particularly famous for its wulfenite, which commonly forms thin, tabular yellow to orange crystals. One of the locality's most distinctive mineral habits consists of wulfenite crystals coated or partially replaced by sparkling druzy quartz, producing delicate blade-shaped forms outlined in tiny quartz crystals. Wulfenite may also be associated with or altered to vanadinite, hemimorphite, and descloizite, creating unusual pseudomorphic and epimorphic specimens. Other minerals reported from the Finch Mine include mimetite, cerussite, galena, malachite, native copper, ktenasite, serpierite, calcite, and gypsum, making it an unusually mineralogically diverse Arizona locality.