Tourmaline (multi-color) (classic material)

Item Description

The prestigious Himalaya Mine in San Diego County, California is one of the most well-known Tourmaline localities in North America. For decades, this mine 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 very thin blue-green "cap" on the basal termination that immediately changes into a rich bubble-gum pink zones, which transitions into a zone of a medium green shade, then a dark green hue at the base 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 a matte luster, and the pronounced striated prism faces have high luster. No damage that I can see, 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 85.5 grams. Valued at $2,500-$3,000.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.