Aquamarine (rare locality specimen)

Item Description

A RARELY seen Aquamarine specimen from a locally known pegmatite in Georgia of all places! I'm told that the mine is open for individuals to dig for a fee, but the most recent info I have seen for this digging dates back a couple of years. According to Dennis Radcliffe and Arthur Bailey, the Hogg Mine (older literature calls it the Oxford Mine) "lies in the southwestern part of the Georgia Piedmont close to the Alabama State Line. The pegmatite is a typical lensoidal graphic granite pegmatite separated from a rose quartz core by a narrow replacement zone chatacterized by A-type muscovite and beryl. Crystals of beryl weighing several hundreds of pounds are reported to have been collected from the property." It has been reported that chemically, the Beryls from this area are varied, containing many elements that are not essential for Beryl to form. Secondly, the Aquamarines in particular from this mine can features fractures that are filled with a second generation of micro (sometimes gem quality) Aquamarine, which is exceedingly rare for Beryl. This particular crystal is a good overall example of the material. In areas the color is a fairly strong blue hue, (almost too blue to be called Aquamarine), which grades into a powder blue and white. The crystal has a partial termination on one end, and a crude contact termination on the other end where it grew up against the pocket wall. It does have good hexagonal form and would make a cool addition to gem crystal suite, or a collection of U.S. minerals.