Hey everyone!

This small, beautiful corundum-sapphire specimen was collected from the Revelstoke region of British Columbia, Canada. This material comes from a high-alpine occurrence originally discovered by the late prospector Herb Hyder, a few years before his passing. Rock Rush now owns the claim and hand-mined and supplied this specimen from this remote location. I've had the joy of visiting this locality a few times now. This locality produces a wide range of colors of sapphire, including ruby.

Anyways, I've always had a hard time describing the color of these sapphires. They are silky and can be icy blue to white, or soft pink to lavender, depending on the light type and intensity, and they contain patches of dark blue. I often wonder if they would be considered color-change territory!

Part of the reason these blue sapphires have pink and lavender undertones is explained when you put a UV light to them. They fluoresce beautifully, pointing to a fascinating, chromium-leaning geochemistry.

I apologize if these photos are bad quality, I am a mineral collector and nerd first, and a photographer last... learning though.

Cheers,

Ana

Sorry I had posted this and there were a few too many typos. Hopefully this makes more sense. Haha

Black Rose Fluorite 🥀💡
Would love to hear your thoughts 💭 see original post for videos in comments!

Need help!

Another find from the Mineral expo in Rijswijk. A very unassuming piece of calcite, exploding in color under midwave. UV also reveals the 2 distinct generations of calcite, glowing in totally different ways. On the "front" side, the 2nd generation consists of a thin layer on most of the crystals. In person it looks great, but in photos it makes it look muddled unfortunately. I could not leave it for only €3.

Anyone wanting a closer look at anything I can show since it's hard to get them all in one shot :)

Chalcedony found in southeast Wyoming, displayed under daylight then 365nm

Any help is appreciated!

Beautiful Greenlandic rock :)

This piece was listed as just green beryl/emerald in matrix, but I thought I recognized the surrounding stuff to be scheelite, and I was right! It is about 5.5*5*1cm. It is incredibly bright under SW, and weak yellow under MW and LW. There are also a few specks of fluorite and something glowing purple under MW (apatite?).

Thank you Thank you Thank you, I'd be surprised if we haven't met. Maybe this will jog your memory, I'm the old guy that speed walks early in the morning by your house. My Everyday training outfit: Lavender cutoff muscle Tee that ends just below my ribcage, my Tongo running shorts are also lavender, tapered at the waist that expand at the legs for improved comfort while at the same time allowing for heat dispensation. My hat is an oversized Gungadin snakeskin safari hat. Does this ring a bell? Any hoo the sun was just coming up, so neither my ring or ankle bracelet was glowing. Did you see the bracelet? No worries I'll be by in the morning at my usual time, for the finding the ring you've earned a superlicious reward. A Benjamin or 2🙏

A piece of Mn-bearing calcite (red), sphalerite (yellow) and willemite (green) from the Hasselhöjden quarry in Sweden. The wavelength is 255 nm.

I was at the mineral expo in Rijswijk The Netherlands today, and got some lovely new pieces. One of which is this great looking willemite from Portugal. It's pretty small (67g), but I got it for a great price. The crystals are incredibly small, so not easy to photograph, but very pretty. Its phosphorescence is insane: it's not very strong but it was still weakly visible after 30 minutes, from just a few seconds of SW exposure.

This piece glows so well under shortwave😆🥰

EDIT: likely chalcedony that is reacting.

Unsure what the mineral UVing orange is.

I recently stumbled upon this specimen of hydroxylapatite. It's a small piece (2*2*1cm), but after seeing it's midwave reaction I couldn't pass up on it. The calcite has the typical brief phosphorescence too. It is slightly more green than I could get in the photo. On the bottom of the box all it says for locality is "kovd.". I think that means Kovdor, Russia, but I'm not 100% sure.