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Rock Crystal

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MGR891655

Rock Crystal

Description Tabs

Description
Locality: 
Grüneckkogel, Mittersill, Zell am See District, Salzburg, Austria
Class: 
Single Crystal
Size Range: 
Museum (18cm plus)
Size: 
18.7 × 6.3 × 4.8 cm
Description

When you look at Austrian Rock Crystals you will recognize that nearly all show stepped habits, a regular sharp habit is very rare - whole famous areas like Rauris Valley, like Ziller Valley, like Habach valley including all important classic discoveries produced this stepped habits, which are so typical for entire Austrian Alps - so this sharp habit makes this discovery very important. And discoveries in Alps are usually always small. It is not like in Brazil or US - there are no quarries where a truck can drive in. All material comes out from alpine clefts, you have to walk for hours, you have to work in dagerous spaces, climb steep inclines and finally - if you have really great luck you will open a cleft with a fist full of crystals. I know what I am talking about - I do field-collecting since I am 12 years old. And sometimes it takes months or even years until you find just one good cleft!

And it became more and more difficult: most localities are located in the National Park „Hohe Tauern“ - the mountain range in the center of Austrian Alps, which includes the highest peaks and the most promising localities. But field-collecting is prohibited inside the National Park. And localities are very rare, most are well known since centuries and so the opportunities to find new clefts are not really good. All this circumstances make alpine material from Austria very, very rare and hard to obtain. But now more about this amazing crystal: it is almost water-clear. On a photo you see much more inclusions than in person - this is caused by the dark back-ground. On a white back-ground a colorless transparent crystal would disappear without any contrast and on the black back-ground you see more of inclusions and of dust and of internal refraction than you see when you hold the crystal in your own hands. So in person the clarity is much better. All faces are very glossy and lustrous, the termination is razor sharp and the pure dimension makes this crystal very impressive. It´s really hard to find a Rock Crystal in this size and quality.

Mineral Data
What's on the rock

Rock Crystal

Variety Of: 

Quartz

Formula: 
SiO2
Strunz: 
4.DA.05
Hardness: 
7.0
Formula: 
Hardness: 
0.0