Dravite Tourmaline (vanadium-bearing)

Item Description

When these Dravite specimens first came to the market, they were said to contain chromium, which gave them their intense green color. It turns out the chromophore in these crystals is actually vanadium, which can also create intense green hues (think of Tsavorite Garnet). This crystal is one of the largest and thickest examples of this incredibly rare Tourmaline that we've had to offer. This 73 gram single crystal has smooth, sharp, well-formed lustrous faces on all sides with a beautiful pyramidal trigonal termination. The only damage is at the base where the crystal was detached from the pocket wall. In reflected light, the color is a very dark greenish-brown (almost black), but if you get good backlighting along the edges, you can see areas of that rich deep green along with golden-brown hues. As a matter of fact, if you can get a really strong light (like a concentrated fiber optic light), you will see that there are actually deep RED hues visible near the termination, and we've done our best to illustrate this in the photos. Obviously, most people don't have a light with this kind of strength at home, but we just wanted to show what can be seen when the crystal is STRONGLY backlit. If the crystal was thinner, more light would be able to pass through and you would see more of the color, but that's the trade off for having one of the thickest crystals we've seen from the locality. If you collect gem crystals, Tourmalines or simply rare material from Tanzania, do not pass this one up. I'm told that the discovery was very limited, and we've yet to see more since they hit the market a few years ago.