5.25" Purple Cubic Fluorite Cluster With Phantoms - Okorusu Mine

Purple Cubic Fluorite Cluster With Phantoms - Okorusu Mine #191984

This is an exceptional, 5.25" wide cluster of cubic fluorite crystals, collected from the famous Okorusu Mine in the Otjozondjupa region of Namibia. The deep-purple coloration of the crystals can be attributed to purple phantoms within. These phantoms are best viewed by backlighting the crystals which also reveals blue-green phantoms within some. The specimen bears faint purple fluorescence under short-wave UV, though the dark crystals can make this difficult to see.

It comes with an acrylic display stand.

The Okorusu Mine (Okarusu Mine) is located roughly 40 kmilometers (25 miles) north of Otjiwarango in Namibia, Africa. It is an open-pit fluorite mine that occurred as an alkaline igneous-carbonatite ring dike complex where the fluorite replaced pegmatitic carbonatite. Mining at this location started around 1920, only to be closed in 1963. Some additional mining took place after 1988 and much of the fluorite collected was provided to specific dealers for sale on the international market. The open pit mine officially closed in 2014, so the remaining material on the market is old stock. High quality specimens can be difficult to come across as a result of this closure.

The fluorite collected from this mine is famous for exceptional quality and color, ranging from purple to yellow-green and often containing sharp phantoms. These fluorites come from multiple "pits" in the mine, each of which produces their own unique fluorite specimens. Some of these pits contain a variety of rare earth element-bearing minerals, sometimes in significant amounts.

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