Imperial Topaz (rare locality)

Item Description

Imperial Topaz is a well-known variety which can include shades of orange, red, pink and purple. The famous pieces in the last 75 years or so, are the excellent examples from Ouro Preto, Brazil. For a long time there were no other major localities that produced much in the way of Imperial Topaz (for reference the first crystals to carry the name "Imperial" were found in Russia and had a pink color), but circa 2009, there was a discovery of some attractive and fine quality crystals from a new locality in Zambia. We got a good parcel of these attractive crystals from our friend in Tucson, who is personally collecting them. They are notably similar to the Brazilian crystals in both color and habit, but I can say that some of these Zambian crystals are actually gemmier than many I've seen from Brazil. The reason you don't see any many gem quality Brazilian crystals is because a large percentage of them are faceted into gemstones, but our friend in Zambian didn't want to butcher good crystals. This piece is a good quality, sharp, lustrous, soft orange color crystal with decent internal gemminess areas. The piece has a classic "chisel"-shaped termination just like the Brazilian crystals, but if you look closely, there are little etching patterns as well. A few small nicks can be seen, but it's still a lovely example of these attractive and exciting fairly new crystals. Specimen weight is 1.65 grams.