Tourmaline (multi-color)

Item Description

The famous Himalaya Mine in San Diego County, California is one of the most well-known Tourmaline localities in North America. It has produced some of the most iconic, eye-catching and colorful Tourmaline specimens in the world. This piece is a beautiful, sharp, lustrous, gemmy, attractive multi-color crystal with a strong almost "chrome green" hue on the basal termination (with a TINY bit of blue which is rare for this mine) which transitions into a thin zone of a lighter green shade, then a silvery-yellow zone throughout the rest of the crystal. When the piece is backlit, the colors really stand out. I can't say for sure which pocket this piece is from, but I'll bet that there are Himalaya experts out there who might know. The termination is glassy, along with the pronounced striated prism faces, which is worth noting and many Himalaya Tourmalines do not have luster on the terminations. There are some nicks on the edges of the termination, but it's still well-crystallized, and the base of the crystal appears to be at least in part recrystallized ("re-healed"), though it's not complete. A classic small cabinet sized representative gem crystal from this historic locality. Specimen weight is 87.1 grams. Valued at $2,500. This piece comes from the personal collection of Colorado mining legend, Dave Bergman, the maternal grandfather of Brian Kosnar. Dave is now retired from mining, but he worked for decades in various mines underground in Colorado, as a miner, mechanic, engineer, shift boss and foreman. His biggest claim to fame is that he was the foreman and the primary person in charge of mining and specimen recovery at the Sweet Home Mine in Colorado in the 1970s alongside his son-in-law, Rich Kosnar. This project what was the FIRST ever operation for specimen recovery at this historic locality. A full-page photograph of Dave can be seen mining underground at the Sweet Home in on page 58 of Peter Bancroft's book "Gem and Crystal Treasures".