Quartz var. Smoky Quartz 'Morion' ex Jack Halpern

Item Description

This is a dramatic quartz crystal cluster featuring a huge central crystal of 17 cm. These are called Morin Quartz by both collectors and "healers" for their special darkness. Morion Quartz is actually just highly irradiated over a long time in the ground, and thus is a darker or truly black type of Smoky Quartz which has been naturally irradiated inside the earth for so long that it is darker than most smoky quartz. It occurs near decaying uranium deposits but is not, of itself, radioactive. This huge specimen weights in at 17 pounds and is awesomely impactful in person ! It is not that the material is rare per se in smaller pieces, but it IS rare in good large and undamaged specimens. This is an old one, although we do not know how old. However it was in Jack's collection by the mid 1970s and so it goes back to the heyday of specimens starting to really come to market. Miraculously, it is in excellent condition despite the size, and the large crystal and all the display face is free of damage. It is complete all around, although uncleaned in a lab and so the back has other trace minerals. If you think that you see some dust in the video, you are not wrong - we had not cleaned it yet fully, from accumulkated dust of sitting on the shelves for decades, because the slight dust coating in the crevasses helped emphasize the shape of the intergrown crystals in the photography (we have since given it a bath to clean it!). This is a major example of this particular style, in intact specimen form. It sat on a top shelf in Jack Halpern's mineral room for 40 years and more. Note the reference to an old article on this material in the Mineralogical Record from 1978. 17 pounds in weight, so please note shipment cost will be proportionate.