The Smoky Hawk claim has, since about 2006 or so, produced amazonite and smoky quartz combination pieces that rival the famous Tree Root Pocket material of the late 1990s. Some of them, such as this piece, are more aesthetic to my eye because they have not only the super colorful amazonite in fake-looking, intense blue color, combined with smoky quartz: also, the best quartzes are generally gemmier and more translucent than the older Tree Root Pocket pieces. Moreover, on this piece, the quartzes (to 3 inches!) shoot up so starkly and dramatically, that it "makes" the specimen. In many such combination pieces, the smokies are undersized compared to amazonite, or vice versa. Or, the two are often in a more jumbly aggregate that is pretty and of high quality, but not really the kind of stark geometry that I favor. I like specimens best when you have crystals on crystallized matrix, and the two geometries are as different in color and crystallography as you see here. This piece has it all! Like nearly all such larger amazonite combination pieces, old and new finds both, this has a few repairs that would be considered par for the course, so long as they are well done and clean (which they are). This specimen sits nicely in the palm of your hand, spraying three-dimensionally to fill space. I obtained this specimen from the William Ferris collection by exchange, before that collection was sold off in 2007-2008. I owned the specimen for about 15 minutes before it was snapped up...seen in person, it REALLY does leap out at you, compared to most others. Mr. Ferris was the first owner, having acquired it directly from the company of Joe and Tim Dorris, the miners, several years previously. Since that time until now it has been in the Dallas collection of Rick Beard. I regard it , for the size, as one of my favorites of this classic combination in a price range that is expensive, admittedly, but still affordable to many collectors without going for megabuck pieces. NOTE CONTRIBUTED BY THE COLLECTORS, JOE & TIM DORRIS: Thanks for featuring the Night Hawk piece in your vault. My son, Tim, who is an avid fan called my attention to the posting. A bit of information: I found it on 29 June 2006. Only a few other pieces came from the pocket, all smaller and relatively insignificant. All showed the nice translucency which this Night Hawk piece exhibits. You can see from the attached photo, the pocket was quite small, less than a foot across. (so, a far more rare piece from a special pocket, still remembered 3 years later by the folks who dug it).

This is a rare matrix bubblegum-colored tourmaline, perched dramatically at one end of a shard of lustrous smoky quartz. The tourmaline has JUICY color, a rich pink-red hue classic for this region. It has a nearly perfect termination with only minute edge wear and a glassy, unusually fine lustre to the top that lets you look right down into the depths of the crystal. The crystal itself is about 10 x 6 x 5 cm in size, though it tapers slightly towards the base. It is repaired, from a natural break in situ, at a point just below the junction to the attached smoky quartz and so the seam is really quite unseen from the front of the specimen. It is a good, clean repair job with minor restoration at the natural break, and without a jarring visual effect when displayed , so I consider it acceptable at a price. A specimen like this would normally be in the 6-figure range if perfect and so, admittedly, this is not quite perfect BUT the price is adjusted accordingly - at a good tradeoff to the collector who can now get a matrix bubblegum pink , that doesn't cost the fortune it looks like it should. This specimen was obtained from a direct source in-country, via email as it came out of the mine, by collector Gene Meieran (from whom I obtained it, in turn).In person, the tourmaline color and photography is most accurate in the closeup (lower-right) photo. The lustre is best shown in the first photo. When we use good lighting on the tourmaline, the smoky quartz appears more black than it actually is, in person (it is more a normal dark gray color, than black as it appears). 1.2 kilos

When I was first offered this specimen via email from a source in Peshawar, who said it had just been hauled in from Afghanistan, I passed on it. I thought it must be a glued-together fake, and a pretty bad fake at that since it was so obvious this could not be real. Unrepaired and a pristine floater complete all around?! HAH! (In fact, I was a little upset my source had the poor judgment to pass on to me such an obvious fake.) I have since been proven wrong, as I found when another foreign source bought the piece and put it in front of me here in the US, trusting I would freak out over it. It is real, it is unrepaired despite its intricate geometry and sheer size (nearly a foot tall!); and it is pristine and undamaged all around as advertised. Oh yes, and it is a floater! The morganite measures 8 x 8 x 3.25 cm and is the size of a hockey puck and as symmetrical as a crystal model. It is PERFECT, as if it were carved from pink ice. The color is a classic pink, not peachy-orange. The contrast of the pastel pink morganite and its sharp hexagonal form to the crazily tilting vertical spray of intense pink kunzites is, obviously, quite startling and exciting to see. It is one of the most 3-dimensional mineral specimens I could imagine and I feel privileged to offer this all-too-real miracle of survival. I was told recently by another dealer that they were offered the specimen in Peshawar when visiting (this was in 2007) but through an intermediary, and at a much higher price. My suspicion is that it did not sell simply because any buyer would have had to be suspicious of its reality - which I have thoroughly checked now in a modern prep lab to be sure of. This is a world class gem pegmatite combination specimen. Note that in normal lighting the photos below are more accurate. The first photo was taken by Joe Budd using stronger, studio lighting.

Purple-capped tourmalines are quite rare, and this piece has a distinct purple zone, above a blue zone, on its termination. More than that, it is just a VERY FINE and aesthetic tourmaline specimen by any standard, with the color as a bonus feature. It is, first off, NOT repaired. Most large matrix tourmalines from this region are repaired at least once, especially when connected to a quartz as this is. And, the quartz and cleavelandite are arranged in great balance, not overwhelming but accenting the tourmaline itself. The tourmaline is very equant and fat, about 7 x 7 x 7 cm overall in size. It has an extremely unusual and GLASSY termination...intricately scalloped, for lack of a better word. It has many subtle growth features that result in incredible reflections and sparkle coming off that termination. I cannot say that I have ever seen this style of termination on such a large crystal - just on small ones, before. Lastly, the piece is shockingly pristine - protected in transit and collecting more than you can normally hope for in such large specimens (782 grams). It has a greater visual "size impact" than you'd think. The purple color , especially in a lustrous termination, is perhaps the rarest of all colors on a tourmaline. In particular, its very rare from this part of the world where they tend towards pastel hues of pink and greens. One can own any number of tourmalines and at the end of the day must ask yourself, which ones are really SPECIAL? This one, it stands out.