Celestine (RARE locality specimen)

Item Description

Celestine is not what most people would refer to as a rare species, but this particular Celestine is from a RARE locality in far southeastern Turkmenistan near the border with Afghanistan. This thumbnail features many GEMMY, sharp, lustrous, pale blue prismatic crystals with "wedge"-shaped terminations measuring up to 7 mm sitting on matrix. Yes, there are some contacts here and there, so the piece is not perfect, but if you collect rare locality specimens, you can't afford to pass up a piece from this somewhat obscure potash deposit which is best known for producing Calcite and Gypsum specimens. Interestingly enough, on mindat.org, it was mentioned that in a 2005 report from Zhang (et al.) the estimated potash reserves at the Gaurdak basin are almost 20 billion tons (over 18 TRILLION kg!).