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  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.
  • A superior specimen featuring a richly colored rubellite tourmaline crystal dramatically contrasted against tan stilbite crystals, white albite, and purple sheets of polylithionite-trilithionite series minerals. The distinctive crystal displays both a flat termination and an intriguingly etched pointed tip, creating an elegant composition that highlights this rare mineral association.

ELBAITE ON STILBITE

Himalaya Mine, Gem Hill, Mesa Grande Mining District, San Diego County, California, USA
7 x 4.8 x 4.1 cm
$600.00
$600.00
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ABOUT THE SPECIMEN

Tourmaline and stilbite make for an uncommon combination, and this piece makes for a great looking example! A richly colored crystal of rubellite measuring to cm is contrasted with a backdrop of tan stilbite crystals, with some white albite and purple sheeted crystals of the polylithionite-trilithionite series (formerly referred to as lepidolite). One end of the tourmaline has a pinacoidal termination, with the other being heavily etched into a more pointed appearance, and the whole specimen displays elegantly.

 

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MORE INFO

First commercially worked in 1898, the Himalaya Mine intrudes the Peninsular Ranges batholith as a northwest-trending pegmatite dike emplaced approximately 99-90 Ma during Cretaceous subduction of the Farallon plate beneath North America. Elbaite occurs in spectacular watermelon zoning - pink rubellite cores from manganese grading to blue-green terminations from iron and copper substitution - alongside bicolor crystals reaching 5-7 cm. The celebrated 1989 pocket discovered by Bill Larson yielded exceptional doubly-terminated floaters showing intense color gradations. Stilbite forms cream to white "wheat sheaf" sprays up to 3 cm, characteristically perched on tourmaline terminations or quartz matrix. What distinguishes Himalaya specimens is the aesthetic combination of these two minerals - the calcium zeolite growing on lithium-rich pocket-zone elbaite creates striking textural contrasts. The pegmatite crystallized from water-rich residual melts during extreme fractional crystallization, with lithium, boron, and volatile enrichment driving gem pocket formation. The mine remains active with fee-dig operations, continuing over 125 years of specimen production.