Treasure Hunting

I found myself sucked into Paint Shop Pro again, this time modifying the photo of the ametrine scepter that I posted yesterday.  I thought that if I tried drawing out the purplish tint a bit that I might see the underlying phantom markings a little clearer.  While that didn’t exactly happen, I did get an interesting representation of the surface pattern on the crystal.  

Before I attempt this again, I’m going to have to go back and take several more photographs of the crystal scepter so that I can get a more three-dimensional representation of it.  Maybe if I overlap the photos, I can combine them for some type of panorama depicting what it would look like if the crystal was “unrolled”.  

Oh the lengths I’ll go to in order to avoid getting any real work done!

Sometimes it’s amazing what you find while cleaning some of the items brought home after a collecting trip.  The photograph here is of a crystal quartz scepter found back in June at the Krystal Tips Mining claim in the Petersen Mountains in Nevada.  The claim site is right on the California border near Hallelujah Junction.  Because of this, the quartz found in that area is often referred to as Hallelujah quartz.  If you’d like to see some of the other specimens gathered there, take a look at the Krystal Tips site.

When I brought this crystal home after the dig, I knew it had some purple to it.  Although it looks a bit more rose-like in this photo, the tip of the scepter is actually a pale amethyst.  That was enough to make me love this crystal, but when I actually started cleaning it, so much more came out about it!  There’s also a lot of citrine in the specimen that I hadn’t noticed before.  I had seen the yellowish tint, but I thought that was coming from the reflection of the dirt that covered most of the scepter.  However, this week (yes, I know I’m a a slacker and should have been cleaning this a long time ago) when I actually sat down to clean the crystal with some soapy water and a toothbrush, I realized that it wasn’t the dirt causing the tint - it was a pale citrine coloring that dominated the bottom part of the scepter.  So what we actually have here is a pale ametrine scepter!

Another neat aspect of this specimen came out in the cleaning as well.  Although it’s a little hard to see in this photo, there are actually phantom markings on this scepter, too.  The term phantom is used in describing quartz when you can actually see the shadow or “ghost” of different stages of the crystal’s development within the quartz.  This markings can be caused by a variety of reasons such as minerals accumulating on the crystal during its growth.  The phantom images on this scepter would probably be a lot easier to see if the faces were polished, but I think I’m going to leave this one just the way it is.  It has a few dings and dents that tell a little bit of the story behind the long life that it’s had, but sometimes it’s the flaws in crystals that make them all the more perfect - just like with people.