Tourmaline (multi-color)

Item Description

Afghanistan has been a great source of fine quality Tourmaline crystals for a few decades, in a wide variety of colors. A nice stout crystal of Tourmaline from Afghanistan featuring a very thin colorless “Achroite” zone at the top of the basal termination which grades into an electric blue “Indicolite” color below, and then pure black Schorl throughout the rest of the crystal. Medium luster with a matte termination. There is a bit of white Albite var: Cleavelandite on the back of the crystal as well. The bottom of the piece is obviously not complete, but with good backlighting, you can see the intense color near the termination. A nice specimen from this classic locality. Weight is 174.9 grams. This piece was a gift to Dave Berman from his grandson, Brian Kosnar in 2016. 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".