Linarite

One of the most legendary of all Arizona and USA classics are the Grand Reef linarites - both because of their innate rarity and the simply stunning color. Few large crystals were ever found, let alone as freestanding thumbnail sized specimens such as this, a pride in the Schauss collection. It is a translucent, electrically-lustrous royal-blue single prismatic crystal of literally unprecedented quality for a large crystal of this rare copper species. So few were found and these are at least 40 years old (1980s or earlier). This dramatic single crystal leaps out from any case with color unmatched by anything else blue in the mineral world. Photo: Jeff Scovil (2013-09-0309) Photoed: Minerals: The Collector’s Newspaper, 2014; 8: 22.