Pyromorphite is one of those obscure minerals you will never hear about except in this post. It's fairly rare and it's only use case if for collectors. It does have a cool name though, maybe a Death Metal band could use it for their name.
Anyway, pyromorphite is a lead mineral, lead chlorophosphate to be exact. While it has a hexogonal crystal system is sometimes forms globs of crystals that are honestly kind of ugly.
It's typical colors are yellow, green or brown, but can come in combinations of those colors as well as shades of orange & red.
While it can be found all over the world, the most famous locality for pyromorphite in the United States is the Bunker Hill Mine in Idaho. Pieces 1" square will sell for upwards of $100. I just picked up 4 small specimens for our upcoming shows in Japan. They are about 1" and will sell for $25-$30 ea.
Bunker Hill is an old mine and most of the specimens have been mined already. So currently the largest and best specimens are coming out of China. Some of the Chinese specimens can be acquired for a fraction of the Bunker Hill prices.
That's it for this short Mineral Mondays. I'll try to be back for the next couple of Mondays with Tokyo Gem Show reports and some new mineral reports. Until then, thanks for reading!