Sphalerite (rare Colorado locality)

Item Description

Facet-grade Sphalerite is fairly rare if you consider that most Sphalerite is either black or opaque worldwide. In the rare cases where you can find transparent colorful material, stones are still difficult to facet because the material is soft, brittle and has multiple cleavage planes to navigate. Sphalerite gemstones from Colorado are very hard to find on the market, as all the old mines closed down years ago. This particular stone was cut from a piece of rough collected off of the dumps of the Big Four Mine in 2004. It shows a very distinctive bright greenish-yellow hue, which is rare for the locality. The stone very only slightly included with an attractive "Round Brilliant" cut. Truth be told, most Sphalerite gems from this locality have some sort of inclusions and are rarely seen in totally eye clean gems. The high refractive index of Sphalerite allows light to bounce around every side of the stone, and the density of the material makes for "heavy" gems, even in smaller sizes. A great collector's stone from a fairly obscure mine in Colorado.