Updated 4d ago

Elbaite

$600.00

$40.00 shipping
Seller offers an extended return window of up to 30 days
Ships from USA

The richness in colour of this individual, off-matrix, prismatic, electric-blue Indicolite Elbaite crystal is superb and it comes from a small, one-off find in 2001 at the small pegmatite deposit at Usakos in Karibib District, Namibia. This colour brightens and intensifies upwards from its base through a superb central half, darkening to totally black across its flat, pinacoidal termination. Seemingly broken across its base, this 'fracture' surface under magnification is actually seen to be recrystallized, showing that it must have naturally become detached in its pegmatite pocket millions of years ago. Actually two parallel crystals, one 4 mm shorter than the other, it has two obvious chipped sections to its prism edges and four tiny chips to the edges of its termination, but stood with good backlighting this looks like a really top quality intensely coloured tourmaline. Never fully transparent, it is translucent other than the very dark upper 4 mm of each crystal with dappling from fine inclusions. An overall very fine, and relatively large gem crystal from this small occurrence in Namibia.