In 1795, this new species was first named for material found at this famous locale. Specimens of this quality are very rarified, and probably themselves quite ancient as now the mountain has been picked over by specimen collectors for hundreds of years. This particular piece was purchased by collector Jack Halpern from an old collection being dispersed in Tucson one year (in the early 1980s), and although it has no old label, it is recognizably an Italian vesuvianite - just bigger and better than any I had seen before. I showed it to several European museum curators at Tucson 2010, recently, to get an opinion on its ranking for size and significance: and was told it is certainly one of the best possible to own in private hands, and comparable or better to what is in old museum holdings in Italy