Azurite

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Azurite is very rarely found at this copper mine, most famous for its cuprite specimens in recent years. This is from one pocket found in the summer of 2013, I am told. Nearly a complete floater, this azurite specimen is composed of rosettes formed by many, tiny, tabular crystals of sparkling, neon blue azurite. The rosettes reach 2 cm across. As an added measure, there are bright green 1-2 mm malachite spheres scattered on the azurite. Impressive overall for the visual aspects of the piece, it is also a very important example for the locality because of its sheer size and color impact: very few large azurite specimens were found here in thelast 3-4 years of intensive specimen recovery. Other than a few very minor contacted spots, it is complete all around, 360 degrees. It has a deep, rich azure color saturation beyond the normal quality for this locality. According to what I have been told, they are rapidly mining through the oxidation zone here, which hosts the secondary copper minerals. As a final interesting point, when you shake the piece, you can hear little rattling sounds inside, and so it seems to be partially hollow (it is tempting to slice it and have two halves of an azurite geode!) .