A very gemmy, transparent, bicolored spodumene from this small mine, collected by Roland Reed and sold to Chuck some years ago. It is complete all around and quite more appealing in person.

Kunzite was first discovered around 1900 in California by the noted mineralogiust Frederick Kunz, who had specimens from this locality. Historically, the best spods in San Diego were collected from this mine and they are at least 60-100 years old. This one ranks right up there with the few famous pieces I have seen for quality of color and gemminess, and should be considered a very important US gem crystal specimen. The kunzite suite here is one of the finest California kunzite suites I know of and was a particular source of pride. This particular specimen is a FLOATER, complete all around, with VERY RICH violet-pink color which is strong when looking down the long or c-axis and a more typical pink color on the other axes. It is as good an old Pala kunzite as I have seen for sale in many years! At 350-plus grams, too, it weighs about a pound and is no lightweight! Apparently this came to Chris out of a German collection, through California dealer Cal Graeber.

This remarkable matrix GEM crystal has incredibly good form and terminations for a San Diego kunzite. It has rich Pala-quality color down the c-axis. Hiriart Hill is around the corner from the actual Pala Chief Mine but is more or less the same area and this locality was also an important producer of gem-grade cutting material in the early years of the 1900s when specimen and gem mining in San Diego provided much of the world's supply of the new species kunzite. Matrix specimens are almost unheard of and I was shocked to see this one, which he obtained from the collection of Chuck Houser in San Diego. Not only is it significant for the locality, but it meets every possible criteria you'd hold a Brazilian or Afghani kunzite specimen to...so then add on the value for locality and its a real killer! I dare to speculate that it might be one of the best matrix American kunzites for the miniature size range?

A doubly-terminated kunzite crystal with striking elongated-but-complete terminations from the famous find known as the Beebe Hole, hit by Loren Beebe while garnet-prospecting over 25 years ago! This one has excellent pink color for the find. It is large, though not exceptionally gemmy, and hence the price is adjusted accordingly. The Beebe Hole was hit by accident when Loren Beebe was prospecting for garnets (around 1976?) in this remote area and stumbled on a spod shard. Exploration led to a SINGLE pocket which he collected in entirety and hoarded for several decades, selling mostly the cutting rough and keeping most of the better specimens until only recently.

An unusual specimen with a surprisingly rectangular-looking pink kunzite frozen in bladed cleavelandite matrix at the base of a sharp prismatic quartz crystal. The contrast of shape is really appealing, visually. Small green tourmalines anchor the kunzite to the quartz like spider webs, in the crevasse between them. The kunzite crystal is 6 x 5 x 1.8 cm. It is fully terminated on the viewing side, unusually flat and straight on its edge as opposed to the normally jagged or pointy termination you would expect. It is strange, but totally natural. The rear termination of the kunzite seems to be contacted where it grew against something else, not broken, per se Overall, just a very unusual piece! Joe Budd photos

A really interesting and unusual kunzite from the Ed David collection! The crystal was, clearly, once a single crystal that experienced selective etching in situ, and now looks like two crystals isolated on matrix. However, it all is really one crystal, with a natural crevasse between the halves. Rather than look broken, the effect is "really cool" and hard to describe. It is just unique in my experience, and the fact that this matrix is still attached is amazing to me. The nice white matrix is stilbite, which is unusual in itself. Joe Budd photos