Fluorite (classic find)

Item Description

These interesting bicolor fluorites started coming out around 2005 for about 10 years, on and off, in varying degrees of quality and color intensity. This is a large plate, fairly complete, with good octahedral crystals to about an inch poking out from etched white quartz matrix. This is pretty much as it was when Fran bought it from a Chinese dealer in Tucson, and needs to go to a lab to be properly cleaned and treated, after which it will improve in color a bit. When they clean off the quartz with acid, as they did, it leaves a thin, invisible crust that hides some of the beauty of the fluorites and a proper cleaning can fix that. Note that the matrix is unusually lightweight on these, and you can hold it easily in your hand despite the size. An old Chinese classic, although a fixer-upper perhaps.