Andalusite (terminated crystals)

Item Description

Andalusite is not really a rare minerals, but it's honestly rare to find well-formed, terminated crystals on the market. This piece comes from a small find around 2010, which produced some attractive Andalusite specimens that showed euhedral crystals with sharp, lustrous faces and beautiful color. This thumbnail sized piece features a couple sharp, well-formed, prismatic, orthorhombic, terminated crystals of pinkish Andalusite free of matrix. The crystals look opaque on the surface, but when they're backlit, they actually show a lovely internal color with pinkish and greenish-yellow tones. Additionally, Andalusite is somewhat pleochroic, so when the crystals are rotated in the light, you can see a very slight shift in color. The piece is contacted in a few places, so it's not 100% perfect, but the crystals are still attractive and worthwhile to add to any suite of gem crystals or pegmatite species.