Schorl (VERY RARE locality specimen)

Item Description

The Foote Mine in North Carolina one of the great mineral localities in the United States. This famous pegmatite locality is best known for its attractive and rare phosphate minerals, but there are plenty of attractive silicate minerals as well. This piece is an exceptionally hard to find example of Schorl Tourmaline, and honestly it's the ONLY one we've ever seen from the locality. Schorl is not a rare mineral, but it's almost impossible to find specimens from the Foote Mine on the market. This piece hosts jet-black, lustrous, trigonal prismatic crystals of Schorl measuring up to 2.0 cm intergrown with Quartz and Muscovite. A few of the crystals on the front of the piece are actually well-terminated, but the crystals on the upper edge are contacted and not completely. You can still display the piece in a way that doesn't really show a lot of damage. A true rarity from this esteemed locale.
From the collection Jack Eaker (whose label says the specimen was identified by Jason Smith).