66 mm Albite Moonstone
$ 72.99
ID20607
Location:
Skarvebukta, Seiland, Finnmark, Norway
Size: 66x37x39 (163,4 gr.)
Description
Translucent moonstone (rare variety of Albite) crystals exhibiting an amazing blue Schiller-effect typical of moonstone. Moonstone is a pearly and opalescent variety of Microcline, it is common to find it in large masses, but it is very rare to find it crystallized.
It is very rare to find, and when I search on Mindat, I can only find two places in the world with Albite Moonstone (Seiland is not mentioned as one of them):
https://www.mindat.org/min-27190.html
If you find other crystallized Albite moonstones for sale, you will also see that they are pretty expensive compared to the ones I am selling.
This is a big Albite crystal with minor Moonstone effect. You will not see the effect in normal daylight, you will only see it if you use very strong light (on the video I have used a flashlight pointing from the left).
You can also see the video on:
https://youtu.be/CtNUh0-5Ock
Even without the moonstone effect, this is a very big and nice Albite. The backside is damaged. Because the Moonstone effect is not so strong, I have priced it a bit lower than most of the other Moonstones.
Skarvebukta, Seiland, Finnmark, Norway
The location is almost at sea level, a place called Skarvebukta (on Seiland island, Finnmark, Norway).
The mindat location is not 100% accurate. The Norwegian word "Skarv" is the name of the bird "cormorant", and the Norwegian word "bukta" means "the Bay". Sometimes you will also see the name written as "Skarveberg", where the Norwegian word "berg" means mountain. Anyway, they all refer to the same place, and because I was there myself when extracting, I can tell that the location was closer to sea level than up in the mountains.
The digging was pretty hard work as we needed to rotate/break off large rocks using only hand tools. And I reckon most "easy-targets" are already extracted back in the 1980s and that you would need heavy tools to find more. Which again probably is not going to happen, because of far into the wilderness this location is.
My father loved walking, and even if the place is not so far away from the road, we always walked from his house and back, even when we have filled our backpacks.
Also seen at the considerable time we spent on this field, there are very little total of material that is good enough for collections. Remember that what I put up for sale is the best ones after my father spent hundreds of hours at this field. Anyway, we had much good time here, and I have many great memories.
And the best part is the Albite Moonstone. I remember discussing this with a geologist who was visiting the island when I was about 12-13 years old. My father liked this Moonstone effect, but he was never crazy about it. After he passed away, I realize that this Moonstone effect in crystallized Albite is extremely rare, and also valuable. I have some few crystallized Moonstones for sale, but mostly the Albite Crystals are without this effect.
In addition to Albite/Moonstone, we found Apatite and Hornblende very close to this location. The specimens were found in the early- and mid-1980's by my father.
The picture below is from one of our trips, that I took with my old manual camera. In white my father, and next to him a very good neighbor and friend.
