Opalized Fluorite One of the most scarce, beautiful and unusual stones in the world, this stone only comes from one very small area in the Utah west desert; the Brush Wellman beryllium mines, where they mine (the 4th lightest element) beryllium for use in missile nose cones and many other high-tech metallurgical uses. It is not open to the public for collecting and very little of this material sees anything other than the ore crusher to extract the about 1% to 2% beryllium contained in the opal tuff. Try to find this exquisite gemstone and you'll see that it's not only very rare, it is very scarce. It is a soft to hard opalized stone that forms in very small to 100+ pound "nodules", composed of predominantly opalized fluorite (blues, purples and whites), often with many other minerals such as quartz, dolomite, rhodonite, manganese oxide, beryllium and other surprises. It often has a "crackled" appearance and is sometimes called "Tiffany Stone", "Bertrandite" "Purple Opal" or "Ice Cream Opalite". I call it Opal-Fluorite. Wholesale value of this material (if you could find it) is about $0.50 per gram or $250/lb.

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This stone is VERY SPECIAL. It is from a small 4 inch nodule that yielded only a very small amount of this unique "one-in-a-million" material. It is rich purple (and a spot of dark purple) to lilac and opal white, with clear and while chalcedonic quartz with lots of attractive inclusions like white and ivory opal very bright red rhodonite, metallic manganese and who knows what else! One of my most prized pieces. Cut in a pleasing free-form shape and backed with cyano acrylate to preserve as much of the stone as possible. A truly unique opalized fluorite cab. 27 x 15 x 4.5 mm - 14.5 carat MPEG VIDEO CLIP 274KB $80.00 + SHIPPING SOLD