Elbaite Tourmaline with Quartz

Unknown Owner

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A densely clustered group of bicolor Tourmaline crystals is adorned with more than a dozen Herkimer-style, doubly-terminated Quartz crystals. The Tourmalines are dominated by a body of black to black-green "Schorl" and pale yellow-green, Elbaite caps that are more pronounced on some crystals compared to others. The crystals look for all the world like ancient Elba Island tourmalines in color palette, but again this piece was bought in Burma and is definitely not from Italy! The Tourmaline crystals range in size from a few millimeters to 1.2 cm in length with two prominent crystals at the top of the piece. The stubby, "Herkimer" Quartzes have a citrine tint and are from 0.5 to 1 cm in maximum dimension. For the completeness of the tourmaline suite, Bill commented to me that he HAD to buy this in Burma when it was shown to him. it was unique, different...and expensive. He paid in Burma 20 years ago, $3750 - just needed to have the diversity for the collection. It is indeed special, but probably worth a little less on the general market, and so we have priced it below the cost in-country, for that reason. Sometimes, locality collecting is like that.