Carpathite (highly fluorescent)

Item Description

The rare species Carpathite is not only hard to find, but it has a unique chemistry as it actually an organic hydrocarbon. To be technically correct, the material is specifically a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) with a chemistry of C24H12. You can find it in old literature referred to as Karpatite, Coronene or Pendletonite. With that said, the most well-known locality for the material (at least in the modern age of mineral collecting) is the former mercury producing Picacho Mine (Los Picachos) in California. This miniature piece host thin, prismatic, electric yellow colored crystals of Carpathite in semi-"spray"-like growths on matrix. You can see there is some damage, but this Carpathite is still remarkably rare virtually impossible to get on the market. The crystals also show an intense bright blue fluorescence under both SW and LW UV light.