Corundum (var: Sapphire) ("floater" crystal) (ex Kay Robertson Collection)

Item Description

A very hard to find specimen of Sapphire from the area around Steinkopf in South Africa. I've never seen a piece of this material before, and it's an excellent example of the species for what it is. This stout, well-formed, sharp "barrel"-shaped hexagonal prism is a complete doubly-terminated "floater" with a tiny bit of attached schist on the side. The color looks slightly slate-gray on the exterior, but when it's strongly backlit, you can see an unusual greenish-yellow hue. A really cool specimen for any collector of African minerals or worldwide Corundums. Ex Kay Robertson Collection (#7745). Kay is a prominent California collector, who specialized in European classics (see the article in the March-April, 2007 Mineralogical Record and the 50+ page article in the German Magazine "Mineralien Welt" November-December 2017).