Dioptase ex. Urish Coll.

Item Description

Dioptase from Tsumeb is one of those things that just add so much color to a case, and is so significant for the locality, that most people seek to own several of them. This is a good palm-sized specimen with over a hundred sharp crystals to 5 or 6mm, grown together like a carpet draping over rock matrix. Amazingly, when they came out now 20-30 years ago, these were formerly known as poor mans emerald because they were cheaper than emeralds and such intense green. Nowadays, a good dioptase should be more expensive than an emerald of comparable ranking relative to what came out. They all dried up, and Tsumeb has not deigned to spit out more in over 25 years. ex. Harold Urish Collection