unusual curved, floating Tourmaline (Smale Coll.)

Item Description

A fabulous, distinctly curved, bi-colored tourmaline from old finds at the famous Cruzeiro Mine and the Steve Smale Collection. The gemmy and lustrous crystal is well-striated and is strikingly doubly terminated. The body of the crystal is a pleasing green. Amazing, juicy pink caps all of crystal terminations. The spectacular, complex termination is just a riot of pink gemminess. The highly lustrous, pinacoidal termination has a very nifty, narrow teal-blue zone just below the pink. The jauntily angled, pink-tipped sidecar crystal and the rich scattering of pink lepidolites are a super accent. A very picky, trivial bit of termination edgewear is noted on close inspection only, I think acceptable in context. Red, bi-colored Cruzeiro crystals of this quality came out in the 1960s and 70s. Doubly terminated crystals are especially rare and are highly desired. I got this one in a large trade with Steve from his extensive Brazilian collection, a few years ago, and it turned up in our recent move. 50 grams. Valued at $2000-2500. His valuation was $1800 in the late 1990s