Bazzite (rare)

Item Description

Bazzite is a rare scandium analogue of Beryl, and due to its blue color, and hexagonal crystal shape, is very difficult to distinguish from Beryl (Aquamarine) visually. Iron is actually responsible for the color in Bazzite, not scandium. According to mindat.org, there are only 23 minerals in the world that contain scandium in their chemical composition, so it's exceedingly rare to find any scandium species, regardless of their size. This piece is from the famed Fibbia (La Fibbia) locality in the Swiss Alps and features a few tiny ( < 1mm ) blue hexagonal crystals of Bazzite, which are sitting atop Adularia (K-Feldspar) with minor associated metallic grey Hematite and off-white "tufts" of a member of the Stilbite Subgroup. We have photographed the Bazzite crystals with a Canon MP-E 65 mm macro lens to better illustrate the quality, but you definitely need some kind of magnification to see them. A really rare opportunity to pick up something that is seldom available on the market from a famous European Alpine locality that has produced some of the finest Hematite "iron roses" ever found. Ex Kay Robertson Collection (#9760). Kay was a prominent California collector, who specialized in European classics. She nearly lived 100 years from April 1920 - March 2020. See the article in the March-April, 2007 Mineralogical Record ( https://www.mineralogicalrecord.com/pdfs/Kay%20Robertson%20Collection.pdf ), and the 50+ page article in the German Magazine "Mineralien Welt" November-December 2017.