Aquamarine (doubly-terminated GEM crystal) (ex Richard Kosnar Collection)

Item Description

A fantastic, robust thumbnail sized specimen from a find in early 1970s. This piece is a wonderful GEM quality Aquamarine specimen from Padre Paraiso featuring a beautiful blue color (with a slight greenish overtone), sharp, well-formed, lustrous, prismatic hexagonal faces and some lovely pyramidal modifications around the upper basal termination. If you flip the piece over you can see it's actually doubly-terminated. There is a conchoidal separation mark on the side of the crystal where it appears to have been intergrown with another Aqua at some point, but there is no real damage of note that I can find. Keep in mind that this piece was a big deal back in the day as it was found at a time when there were no gem Aqua crystals from Pakistan or Namibia on the market, and it was a great rarity to find gemmy, sharp euhedral crystals like this from any locality. The piece comes from the collection of the well-known dealer Richard Kosnar (the namesake for the phosphate Kosnarite) who made a name for himself in his early days a mineral dealer by traveling to Brazil often in the 1970s. Rich brought back many significant gem mineral specimens and assorted rarities during his travel. This specimen is valued at $950. Specimen weight is 20.78 grams.