Quartz (''Mango Quartz'')

Item Description

Quartz is one of the most diverse mineral species in the world, occurring in a wide range of styles, habits and color. These beautiful and certainly unique specimens first appeared on the market in 2017, and they were a big hit with collectors. They were instantly regarded as some of the most distinctive and interesting Quartz crystals ever found. This distinguishing orange-yellow color has given these Quartz crystals the nickname "Mango Quartz", and have become very popular among Quartz collectors and crystal enthusiasts. Typically, Colombia isn't a big Quartz producing country, and these crystals were actually mined along a roadcut in the middle of the famous Emerald mining region in Boyacá. The upper portions of most of these crystals feature bright yellow-orange inclusions of a mineral that was first reported to be Humboltine, but others have since stated it is Halloysite. I cannot find definitive confirmation that the inclusions are Halloysite, only referential posts on various sites online. The Quartz crystals are high quality in their own right, as they are textbook, hexagonal prisms with good internal gemminess, which is only accentuated by the beautiful inclusions. This piece is a lovely crystal group featuring a predominant crystal with sharp, lustrous faces and of course those eye-catching yellow inclusions, which plays host to a somewhat "jackstraw"-esque group of thinner GEM QUALITY prisms of Quartz with very minor yellow color aesthetically flaring off the side. I don't know if there will be more of these in the future, so if you're a fan of interesting Quartz specimens or unique inclusion specimens, don't pass this one up, as there are not nearly as many as there were a few years ago. For more information, please see Rocks & Minerals May/June 2019 issue, Vol. 94, No. 3.