Wesselsite (ridiculously rare) with Sugilite

Item Description

This is a ridiculously rare piece of Wesselsite from the type locality, its namesake locality, the famed Wessels Mine in South Africa. Wesselsite has a remarkably rare chemistry being a strontium copper silicate, and the only other mineral I can find out of thousands of species with comparable chemistry is Tschörtnerite. Wesselsite was approved in 1994, but has only been found in ONE other world locality outside of the Wessels Mine. This piece is a beautiful and certainly colorful association specimen featuring intense azure blue Wesselsite which is intermixed with richly colored purple Sugilite. From a small find of late 2011, and analyzed and confirmed by Raman Spectroscopy at the University of Arizona. These are going to be considered best-of-species material for intense color, though they are either non-crystallized or embedded. It's a great combination of rarity and beauty in the mineral world. For reference, Sugilite was named after Ken-ichi Sugi, and is almost always mispronounced as "Soo-jill-ite", but should properly be pronounced with a hard "g" as in "guide". This is something that is virtually non-existent on the open market, so if you collect rarities or minerals from the type locality, don't miss out!