Kotulskite

Description

These kaleidoscopic Kotulskite crumbs were first found in Talnakh, Noril’sk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, then were on display at the Vandenbroucke Museum in Waregem, Belgium for a while, and are now waiting to come home with you!

Kotulskite has a hardness of 4 – 4½ and a specific gravity of 9.18 (calculated), according to Mindat. It was named in 1963 to honor Vladimir Klement’evich Kotul’skii (Владимир Климентьевич Котульский), a geologist at the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and an expert on copper–nickel deposits.

There are five small specimens included within the capsule remaining, and you can either choose to bring home one, or all five, and at first you may think a small capsule with smaller, non-descript, blackish, silverish metal crumbs within may not pose very much of a prized collectable, but if you’re looking for a Palladium sample, at nearly 42%, this specimen would do you incredibly well, despite its size!

Palladium is found in only 84 known and named minerals, as well as its native form, and most comes from Russia, Canada, South Africa, or Montana.

Kotulskite, specifically, can be found in around 150 recorded localities, with around only 10 in the US, and the nearest to Colorado being just a bit North, in the Rockies of Wyoming, at the New Rambler Mine, in Albany County. At that mine, in addition to Kotulskite, you can also find Merenskyite, another Palladium-bearing mineral which can also find at the Copper Hill Mine in La Plata County, Colorado. Unlike at the New Rambler Mine, however, at the Copper Hill Mine, you can also find Sopcheite, which is another Palladium-bearing mineral, and native Palladium. Copper Hill Mine is the only known locality in Colorado where you can obtain Palladium.

Regardless, wherever you are, be sure to keep an eye out for a shiny little piece of metal like this, and you may have just stumbled upon your own new Palladium mine! While it’s currently trading for only around half of the price of gold, it’s historically been as much as four times the price of gold! No matter what gold is trading at, Palladium is still (as of the time of this upload) trading for around $1,000/oz, so it’s definitely worth your time to get familiar with these small crumbs!