Tourmaline

Item Description

A pair of beautiful, gemmy, sharp, lustrous, prisms of Tourmaline featuring a mix of light blue and vivid pink hues, free of matrix. The Tourmaline crystals are in excellent shape, with no major damage that I can see, and if you flip the piece over, you'll see one of the crystals is actually doubly-terminated, with many tiny pyramidal terminations, and the other crystal has partial recrystallization ("re-healing"), so the piece is nearly a complete "floater". This is an older specimen, dating back several decades, and comes with a label stating it is originally from the collection of Edna D. Doughty, along with an old dealer label from Larry Conklin, circa the 1960s-1970s. From the collection of Colorado mining legend, Dave Bergman who acquired the piece from his son-in-law Richard Kosnar, whose hand-written label accompanies the specimen. Dave is now retired, but among other things, he was the foreman and primary person in charge of recovering specimens at the famous Sweet Home Mine near Alma, Colorado during the late 1970s. He is also the maternal grandfather of Brian Kosnar. See Dave's photo mining at the Sweet Home on page 58 of Peter Bancroft's book "Gem and Crystal Treasures". Ex Brian Kosnar specimen. Donated to the Rice Museum by a local donor, for this benefit auction.