Large Benitoite with Joaquinite, Djueleite & Natrolite on Matrix
Benitoite Gem Mine
San Benito County, California
18 cm x 12.4 cm x 7.5 cm, 3.06 lbs
Out of an old collection comes this amazing benitoite specimen.
Recently repatriated from an old German Collection.
The original yellowed, typed collection label has a date of 1967,
guessing that is when it was added to the collection.
Specimens such as this do not come to market often!
Dozens of beautiful blue benitoite crystals, up to 2.1 cm, adorn one side of this large piece of bluish green schist matrix.
There are some beautiful orange micro joaquinite crystals visible.
Also, you will see spots of green. These are degraded crystals of the copper sulfide mineral Djurleite.
In at least one of the green spots, it would appear that the copper sulfide may have formed as Chrysocolla,
which was rare at the mine, but has been noted as one of the minerals found at the mine.
All of the blue crystals contrast so well on the snowy white natrolite.
Although some of the natrolite appears slightly discolored with either dirt or an unknown brown mineral,
it could be etched a bit more and cleaned up, but we wanted to leave it as it was from this collection.
There is a lot of smaller size gem rough throughout, but a rare size specimen such as this,
with so much crystal coverage, should stay intact.
It has old collection numbers visible on one side matching the collection labels number.
There are a few damaged crystals, but does not take much away from the large beauty.
Overall a very impressive specimen for any collection.
