MQA59 Beryl var. Heliodor
Befotaka Sud District, Atsimo-Atsinanana Region, Fianarantsoa Province, Madagascar
6.1x 1.25x 1.0 cm
$680
A beautiful, doubly terminated heliodor from Madagascar. This piece comes from a recently discovered pocket that produced a small quantity of excellent heliodors and aquamarines. Some are obviously one or the other, this one is definitely heliodor. One termination is flat, the other is dome shaped.
Despite this being my fourth trip to the country, I had only ever come away with a few beryl samples previously-- usually nothing particularly gemmy. With that said, good beryl specimens are not common from Madagascar-- in fact, the last time I know of a decent pocket being discovered was almost 7 years ago. That is not to say there have been none since, but I certainly haven't seen new examples in any quantity since then.
It is somewhat difficult to get the color right in the pictures, so I have photographed it with a couple different backgrounds-- the super bright image is an iPhone picture in direct winter sunlight-- as you can see, the thing really glows if you light it correctly, and the effect can be recreated with a well-placed LED.
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