This is a briliantly lustrous, sparkling blue specimen that is large and unrepaired. The major crystal is 4 inches tall, and 2 inches across the termination! ALL crystals here are GLASSY, with the best lustre I have seen, almost glassy and polished in appearance. Even the terminations share the incredible lustre and clarity. Within the larger crystal is a large moving water bubble, easily seen; and a few smaller ones as well. The whole piece is a pocket floater! It broke away from the pocket wall and the backside was microcrystallized, so it is complete even on the bottom in a technical sense. More importantly, it look sgood all around, 360 degrees. I have not seen any aquas quite like this one, with the combination of lustre, color, and interesting inclusions (that serve to disperse light and enhance the color and sparkle inside). I will also add that large aqua plates like this, with no repairs, are VERY uncommon. The "Roof of the World" was not as productive this past summer season...pickings were slim at the Denver Show and this one, which I bought from a normal supplier en route to the show, was one of the very few pieces of any significance I saw there. I was lucky to get it as well, as this person holds a US citizenship and other Pakistani and Afghani dealers seem to have not been able to clear the visa hurdles to get their specimens here, this year.

WEIGHT= 650 grams This is one of only a dozen or so great pieces to be preserved from this most famous Aqua find of modern era! All went into major collections, and this is one of the few of those that may ever be available again. And, you know i normally dont get excited about big single gem xls. this thing GLOWS and has the juiciest deepest richest blue color chacteristic from the famous Medina pocket of 1997. Most folks consider this the most important find of gem quality aquamarine in a single pocket, since the 1940s find of the style of the "Pioneer Aqua" there. This piece doesn't COST six figures, but it is borderline: by which I mean that I could easily see a few other dealers putting a 100k tag on it, and not bat an eye. I just do not happen to NEED that price, in the amortization as I priced this collection. It is the kind of piece that, looking down the road, I can easily see as an investment in that it will be six-figs quite reasonably before too many years, when another collector enters the market and wants one of these baseball-bat-styled gem crystals for a major collection. In fact, I have seen a similarly-sized piece in the mid-six figure range this year from one other source - a slightly fatter, but shorter specimen from the same group of the original find. There just isn't anywhere else to go to get one, and they are "crown jewels" of any highest-tier gem collection, so the price and value can only go up with time. I would not say this for any big aqua, but the Medinas have a special internal vibrance and color to them and are recognized universally as being a quality and rarity above the normal big aqua single. Despite the size, one wonders if there are compromises being made to obtain such a large Medina aqua here: the answer is NO. The quality is every bit as good as what you can ever hope to get from the find; they remain uniquely recognizable in the beryl world as being from a unique and special pocket; the history and pedigree are good; and the piece is just plain impactful. The strength (and the problem) with the material from this find is that it is all gemmy and thus intrinsic gem rough value is very high: so the good part is that makes them beautiful. The flip side is that this makes them "cutters" of obvious and easily realized value to the miners. Most specimens WERE cut at the time of discovery, in fact.. Thus, Wayne Thompson, when he bought the specimens from the pocket in Brazil , had to pay gem rough prices for them by carat weight (5 carats per gram). What Wayne bought is what was saved from destruction and use in the gem trade. They cut big, beautiful stones. Few survived for our market, and a certain percentage of those have even been cut since for the large rough in them. This one was one of two pieces sold to Ed David the year they came out. I just cannot say in words how much this gemmy monster DOMINATES a showcase with color and intensity. Especially when lit from above, it glows like a fiber-optic cable. The price, by the way, translates into the low $20's per carat, and for this quality of cutting or carving rough , this is not a bad intrinsic valuation at all. I nfact, it is a very high percentage of the specimen value compared to most gem crystals in cutting vs. specimen valuations. Comes with custom engraved lucite base, for easy display.

An incredibly elegant piece with sharp crystallography, with real crystals and not the "crystalline" style found most often in California. This is a dramatic, arborescent-looking specimen that just has so much character for the size, it stands out even among larger and pricier golds.

For the size and overall visual impact, this is a stunning and unusually large rhodo plate with SHARP, and I mean SHARP, GEMMY crystals to 2 cm in size. Most of them average 1 cm. Sprinkled amonst the red, are sharp black clusters of metallic tetrahedrite which make for a really nice contrast. The overall shape of the piece is very sculptural with a slight curvature to it, not "cookiecutter" or blocky as so many large specimens are trimmed out from the plates they are sawed out on. The piece has the TOP CHERRY COLOR. This is not off-color, not strawberry in hue as so many you see on the market today are. This is a piece that has the color and lustre combination (important!) that, even "way back when" only a few years ago when the mine was still open, even in context of the many finds after 2001 or so before it closed, you couldnt get. Most people then and now settle for pieces with lesser color saturation, less lustre, and more damage...its all that is out there. I sold this one back in the late 90s and was happy to get it back recently! You just cannot find large cabinet rhodos of quality around. And this is one I am happy to have owned again and again, and would do so a third time. They appreciate at such a fast clip every year, 20% or so it seems, that I cannot replace my supply except by buying entire collections with specimens in them. So, I rarely sell mine. Or, as with this one, I'll give it a few months on the web and then pull it down and stash it for the future. Just cashflow...this is one rock I am happy to keep as rhodo today is "red gold" in the bank better than the cash is. Comes with custom lucite base for easy display. Recently, I had the chance to trade this older specimen back from a collector and i STILL find it unique, now, 3 years after I first had it.