Opalized Fluorite
One of the most scarce, beautiful and unusual stones in the world, this stone
only comes from one very small area of beryllium mines in the Utah west desert
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, 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.
UPDATE: I am now out of the lower
grade bulk material with not allot of the higher grades as well. There is no
more of this available where I used to dig it so the price has gone up and soon
there will be no more available.
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