Tourmaline (Indicolite with a RARE purple termination)

Item Description

A fantastic single crystal of Tourmaline from the Piauí Valley in Brazil with sharp, lustrous, smooth, well-formed faces and a beautiful pyramidal termination, free of matrix. The crystal mostly appears black in reflected light, but when it's STRONGLY backlit it shows a gorgeous steel-blue Indicolite hue in the lower two-thirds, and the upper portion features a RARE deep purple hue! Purple might be the rarest color for Tourmaline, and to find such a richly saturated shade in a crystal like this is fantastic. Like I said, this one is dark, it needs strong backlighting, but you don't see many like it, and if you collect gem crystals, Tourmalines, Brazilian minerals or pegmatite minerals, don't miss out on this beauty. No damage outside of the bottom where it detached from the pocket wall.
From the collection of Vasco Trancoso, a medical doctor and prominent mineral collector from near Lisbon, Portugal (https://www.mindat.org/user-11954.html). He assembled his mineral collection over the course of 60 years, and built a fine worldwide display collection that we recently purchased. This piece is pictured on mindat.org at https://www.mindat.org/photo-188052.html