Chrysocolla with Malachite (ex Willard Wulff Collection)

Item Description

A beautiful, classic stone from Arizona. This hefty and colorful "Oval Cabochon" cut gem is a great representative stone from this famous Copper producing state. When the stone is rotated in the light, it shows beautiful green and blue-green hues from the mix of Chrysocolla and Malachite with black tones from Tenorite(?) or Cuprite(?). For the $100 starting bid, the stone is priced at just UNDER $2 per carat, which is well below wholesale for the material. A very cool stone of this well-known and now difficult to obtain material. The gem comes from the collection of Willard W. Wulff Sr. (1904-1998) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, a prominent figure and collector of Colorado minerals. Wulff was one of the founding members of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society in 1936. You can read Willard's bio on the Mineralogical Record website here ( http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1528 ). Later in Wulff's life, he took an affinity to cutting cabochons, and this particular stone was in fact cut and polished by Wulff.