Minerals Azurite, Pyrite And Stibnite

Day 105: My mineral collection has been confined to boxes in the garage for the last twenty years or more, the occasional specimen only rarely being brought out of storage for a photo shoot or some other short-term project. I simply don't have space to display rocks, nor the patience to keep them dusted. Unfortunately, many of the labels have fallen off individual boxes and my memory is somewhat vague when it comes to the more obscure examples, so today I pulled out a sampling easy to identify.

The blue crystals are azurite, a relatively soft carbonate (hardness 3.5-4.0) found in Arizona and Mexico as well as other sites around the world. Its color comes from copper.

Pyrite (a sulfide) is also known as "fool's gold," although any fool knows that gold does not occur as cubic or octahedral crystals. It is often found in hydrothermal deposits. It has a hardness of 6.0-6.5.

Stibnite is another sulfide. Its primary component is the element tin. It is quite soft (hardness 2.0) and its long, slender crystals have a beautiful silvery sheen.