Tourmaline from Tourmaline Queen Mine, Pala Mining District, San Diego County, California, USA

Blue Cap Tourmaline from the famous 1972 find at the Queen Mine, Pala, San Diego County California USA.

Two intergrown "Blue Cap" Rubellite Tourmalines (elbaite) from the famous 1972 find at the Tourmaline Queen Mine by Pala Properties Int'l (dug by Bill Larson, Ed Swoboda, John McLean). This was my "holy grail" specimen, one that I thought that I would never be able to obtain. Only a few intergrown crystals were produced from the find, most were singles and a handful of matrix pieces. I confirmed with Bill Larson that this was indeed from the famous find, and is in the top half of pieces found. Most this good are now in museums or very prominent collections. The largest crystal is 10 cm (4 inches) tall and the specimen weighs 1 kilo. I'm honored to have it in my collection (Wentzell Mineral Trust) and its one that I will probably never sell or trade. I could never get another one this good regardless of how much money I had. A childhood dream realized. For me, growing up in southern California, this was the most important find of all time and in my opinion, still is. The ones I can compare it to that are somewhat similar, would be the 4 group cluster in the AMNH or the 2 crystal intergrown "Beer Cans" in the Yampol/Mineral Trust Collection. This will probably be the apex of my collection and I doubt I will ever get a better piece.