Hematite

Unknown Owner

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This is from a small find of hematite that I was told was collected 3 years ago, stashed and put away till now. It came to the Tucson show, and there I got much of the pocket. The hematite is jet black - not silvery as usual but really jet black, and so metallic and reflective you cannot believe it. These specimens BLOW AWAY the lustrous hematites from other localities and really are the most lustrous examples of the species I have seen - yes, blasphemy though it be, more so than Swiss or other previous Kalahari (Wessels Mine) hematites. The crystals are so brilliantly and naturally lustrous, they dull even with a simple gentle touch of fingerprint (and associated small oils from the skin which normally ENHANCE luster on other species and yet here can only hide the real luster underneath). In fact, you can see in the photo we intentionally did not clean the fingerprint off to emphasize this fact, to show how these are so lustrous in nature. And yet, the photos fail to convey, in the end, how good these specimens are. Trust me, its unlike any other hematite you have seen, in overall brilliance, in person. The crystals on this specimen are all pristine on the display face, and reach 3.2 cm in size. Interestingly, as a bonus, the small dark-black, pagoda-like crystals with lesser luster, that set off the larger crystals by accenting them, are hausmannite. This is a new combo on me, and quite distinctive for the pocket.